Business IT Alignment

[Former Member]

Dear All,

I have been reading some stuff on Enterprise Architecture and SOA. The word 'Business IT Alignment' is used in almost every page of those articles.

I am just wondering how do we measure the 'Business IT Alignment' from the enterprise architecture perspective or SOA perspective.

Can anybody throw some light on it.

Regards

Sreekanth

[Former Member]

Hello Sreekanth,

In my opinion, Business-IT alignment is a term as old as IT exists: it just states the difference between people. The more people in an organization who can look at a problem/opportunity from both sides (and are <u><b>trained</b></u> to do so: thus had a technical as well as a business education!!), the better business goals can be translated to technical requirements and technical developments and concepts be translated to business opportunities.

That's the real alignment.

And yes, architectural principles and concepts like BPM in combination with SOA makes it more easy to get it implemented, and flexible enough to change it in the pace business requires.

However: enterprise architecture and process modelling is more used in IT than in board rooms. And in most organizations the greater part of people do NOT work in IT and are NOT accustomed to (IT) modelling conventions and tools. Therefore in your "aligment" project approach you need to specifically make use of different methods to get the requirements straight.

So, how do you measure business-IT alignment? By sending a questionaire on how people feel about the way their work is supported and the speed of changes are followed. And yes, for the IT part it is essential if you have all process descriptions and IT services in one set of tooling to accomodate this agility.

This is my experience in doing BPM/SOA projects: it is about people and culture more than about models and tooling.

I hope this throws a light.

Regards, Edo van de Velde

[Former Member]

> Dear All,

> I have been reading some stuff on Enterprise

> Architecture and SOA. The word 'Business IT

> Alignment' is used in almost every page of those

> articles.

> I am just wondering how do we measure the 'Business

> IT Alignment' from the enterprise architecture

> perspective or SOA perspective.

> Can anybody throw some light on it.

>

> Regards

> Sreekanth.

Hi,

While developing a S/ware,In the "Requirement phase" the user gives the requirement.The System Analyst ensures that this "Requirement" is adequately taken care of by the design.Thus at the design stage the IT-Business alignment is made on "one to one" basis.This is the area where you measure the 'Business IT Alignment".

In the implementation scenerios the "Requirement" is represented by the "scope".

The tests like unit test,integration Test,UAT,etc ensure the Business-IT alignment.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

Ramesh.

[Former Member]

Dear Sreekanth,

Only the combination of clearly defined business processes and highly integrated IT system infrastructure meets today's business requirements.

With SOA:

You are able to de-couple logical business processes from the complexity of system infrastructure. Integrate applications, roles, internal and external services to event-driven, flexible business processes.

Further with Xapps you reuse process steps in custom coposites from Solution Map.

Visit the following links:

http://www.bitaplanet.com/software_services/article.php/3645736

http://research.pcpro.co.uk/detail/RES/1179517123_377.html

Regards,

Naveen.