Business IT Alignment • Improves Products and Services: Ensures innovative and customer-

centric solutions.
Lec 1 • Better Decision-Making: Provides data-driven insights for better
Alignment: The way things are arranged or coordinated in a particular strategic decisions.
order, or how well they fit together. • Boosts Team Performance: Aligns IT and business teams to work
together towards common goals.
Generating Business Value via IT
• Reduces costs: Streamlines operations and minimizes resource
A different approach is needed, focusing on two key actions: wastage.

• Appreciation: assessing and Why IT and Business Strategies Become Misaligned

understanding what is currently
• Lack of Technical Literacy: Business leaders may not fully
happening within the business
understand IT capabilities, which can lead to poor integration of IT
• Leadership: Once the situation is
with business goals.
understood, leadership helps decide
• Blurred Business Strategy: When business objectives are unclear or
the next steps and actions needed.
undefined, it becomes difficult to align IT efforts with those goals.
Barriers: • Lack of Strategic Agility: Inability to adapt quickly to market
changes or technological advancements hinders alignment efforts.
• Ignorance: "I don’t know."- Lack of awareness within the business
about IT's role and its impact. How Business Leaders can use IT to the Fullest
• Apathy: "I don’t care,"- lack of interest or commitment to using IT for
• Assess the business strategy: Evaluate how IT aligns with and
business improvement.
supports the overall business goals.
• Despair: "I don’t know how,"- businesses are unsure how to use IT
• Discover new benefits: Identify innovative IT applications that can
effectively to achieve their goals.
provide competitive advantages.
Overcoming Barriers: • Gather best ideas: Encourage collaboration and input from IT and
business teams for creative solutions.
Ignorance: • Get an opinion from outside: Seek external expertise to gain fresh
o Expose the data: Share clear data that shows how IT can benefit the perspectives and identify potential improvements.
business. Role of Technology Leaders in Business and IT Alignment
o Call in the experts: Bring in knowledgeable IT experts to bridge the
knowledge gap and offer insights. • Know your business: Understand the core operations, goals, and
challenges of the organization.
Apathy: • Know IT trends: Stay updated on emerging technologies and how
they can benefit the business.
o Find what they care about: Understanding the business’s priorities
o Listen harder: Pay close attention to the business to understand their • Educate the IT team: Ensure the IT team understands business
needs and concerns. objectives and their role in achieving them.
• Pay attention to early signs of misalignment: Identify and address
Despair: mismatching between IT and business strategies promptly.

o Play your strengths: Focus on what IT does best and showcase its How to Achieve Business IT Alignment
capabilities.
o Put your skin in their game: Showing commitment and • Strategic goals: Clearly define and align IT objectives with business
understanding the business's goals. priorities.
o Find support: Seeking buy-in from key stakeholders • Business Relationship Manager: Appoint a dedicated role to bridge
IT and business teams.
Business IT Alignment • Mutual Understanding: Foster open communication to ensure both
teams understand each other's needs and goals.
• IT works closely with business decision-makers to boost financial • The Idea of Convergence: Integrate IT and business processes
returns and market competitiveness. seamlessly to work as a unified system.
• Alignment occurs when IT and business professionals collaborate to • Agile Development Methodology: Use flexible approaches to adapt
achieve company objectives, benefiting the business significantly. quickly to changes and maintain alignment.
When a business successfully uses IT to achieve its objectives, it creates
Lec 3: Business-IT Alignment: An Oracle View
alignment between IT and business. The result is a system that benefits
Oracle view on Business IT Alignment
the business, driving efficiency and growth.
• A white paper
Aligning business and IT strategies has been a long-standing challenge
• Provides guidance for CIOs and IT strategists
but is achievable. Success relies on a strong information leader who:
• Provides a conceptual view to design and evaluate IT strategies,
 Fully understands the business. helping to build strong business cases for IT.
 Identifies areas for improvement. • Key Insight: Alignment requires collaboration from both business
 Implements IT solutions that add value. and IT sides to succeed.
• Success Factor: Businesses must recognize the importance of their
Key factors: Appreciation and Leadership. entire performance network, which includes channel partners,
suppliers, innovation partners, investors, customers, and competitors.
Lec 2: Business-IT Alignment: Challenges and Rewards Stakeholder alignment is critical and should be a top priority for
Why IT Strategy Must Align with Business Strategy organizations.
• Manages Risk and Compliance: Helps address regulatory challenges
and mitigate risks effectively.
 The Architecture Four Characteristics of Analytical Competitors- Traits of
organizations that use analytics to gain a competitive edge

• Strategic Alignment: Analytics are aligned with the organization's

overall strategy, supporting its unique strengths and goals.
• Enterprise-Wide Integration: Analytical tools and technologies are
implemented across entire organization, ensuring consistency and
accessibility.
• Leadership Commitment: Senior management actively promotes
and supports the use of analytics throughout the enterprise.
• High Ambition: These organizations have a strong desire to use
analytics to outperform competitors, aiming to continuously innovate
and gain a competitive advantage.

Steps to Achieve Smart, Agile, and Aligned:

• Getting Smart: Simplify and improve management systems to make

Management Excellence better decisions.
 Three Characteristics: Smart, agile, and aligned. • Becoming Agile: Integrate operational and management systems for
 Focus Area: Centers on management processes like plan-to-act seamless functionality.
and analyze-to-adjust. • Creating Alignment: Use accurate information to synchronize
processes and goals across the organization.
Operational Excellence
Lec 5: Operational Excellence
 Three Pillars: Cost, quality, and speed • Cost-efficient organizations have higher margins, and therefore more
 Focus Area: Emphasizes optimizing business processes like investment capacity.
order-to-cash or procure-to-pay. • A focus on quality gives them competitive advantage, offering a
superior price-quality ratio
Technological Excellence
• Speed is the essence in a best-in-class supply chain.
 Three Keywords: Complete, open, and integrated. Operational excellence has two goals:
 Supports achieving operational and management excellence.
1. to enable the organization to operate on the efficiency frontier
Lec 4: The Perspective of Management Excellence 2. to free up resources (like time, money and people) to invest in
Primary Goal: Operational excellence should be the top priority for management excellence
organizations.
Operating on the Efficiency Frontier (involves optimizing key areas
Smart: to achieve maximum efficiency)
• Organizations must understand changes in the market and recognize • Cost Efficiency: Reducing the cost per transaction or business
their implications. process is important, regardless of strategy.
• It’s not enough to gather insights; businesses must act on them to stay • Quality Improvement: Offering the best price-to-quality ratio is
competitive. essential to remain competitive.
- Customer Focus: Ensures customer satisfaction, retention, and
Agile:
loyalty by delivering value efficiently.
• With products and services having shorter life spans, agility is key to
Operating on the Productivity Frontier (optimizing business
being a first-mover or fast follower.
processes for maximum productivity and responsiveness)
• Flexibility in strategies, plans, and processes is essential to stay
relevant in dynamic markets. • Speed: Critical for building efficient lean supply and demand chains.
• Agility sets organizations apart by allowing quick adjustments and
innovation. - From Lean to Agile: Moving beyond a lean value chain to an agile
value chain enables adaptability and responsiveness to market
Aligned: Success relies on aligning the entire value chain, ensuring all changes.
parts of the organization and its stakeholders work harmoniously
toward shared goals. How Operational Excellence supports Management Excellence by
improving cost, quality, and speed
 Operational excellence focuses on optimizing operational
processes to create competitive advantage.
 Management excellence aims to create better management
processes to differentiate from the competition.

Management Excellence and the Role of IT

• IT acts as a key enabler or leader in achieving smart decision-making
by providing the tools and technologies needed to analyze and act on
information effectively.
• Most organizations have access to robust BI tools and analytics, Smart:
which provide valuable insights for informed decisions.
• Cost: Reduces the price of obtaining information.
• Quality: Ensures information is reliable and relevant.
• Speed: Provides timely insights and early warnings for decision-making.
 Agile: Integrated IT Strategy: As no organization stands alone, it must
interact with many stakeholders.
• Cost: Improves turnover rates by adapting quickly to changes.
• Quality: Reduces failure rates with higher "first-time-right" success percentages. • Leveraging existing assets, this creates new decision-support
• Speed: Enhances time-to-act, enabling faster responses to changes. information across the value chain.
Aligned: • Ensures seamless communication among all components.
• Aligns operational and management processes effectively.
• Cost: Increases the efficiency of user and information reach per dollar spent.
• Quality: Improves accuracy and follow-through on commitments. How Technology Excellence supports Management Excellence
• Speed: Shortens time-to-benefit, ensuring quicker realization of results.
Management Technology Excellence
Excellence Complete Open Integrated
Operational Excellence and the Role of IT
Smart Provide insights Enable access and Share cause-and-effect
from both internal collect data from relationships
Focuses on using technology to improve business processes. and external data various internal throughout the value
to create a broader and external chain to ensure
• Automation: By minimizing human interaction, IT can automate perspective (radar sources. consistency.
repetitive tasks, making business processes more efficient. screen).
• Standardization: IT ensures that any changes made to processes or Agile Provide processes Relate data and Provide an actionable
and technology processes across framework for all
data are automatically reflected across the entire organization. that drive integral strategic, tactical, relevant stakeholders.
• Integration: IT connects different business processes, allowing them change. and operational
levels.
to work together seamlessly for consistency and improved
Aligned Provide a unified Share insights with Provide a standardized
performance. version of the all stakeholders for way of working,
truth and ensure transparency. applying best practices
PESTEL Analysis completeness. across the value chain.

A tool that helps organizations identify and evaluate external factors How Technology Excellence supports Operational Excellence
that may impact their operations.
Operational Technology Excellence
Excellence Complete Open Integrated
Category Factors
Cost Offers economy Provide ability to Lower transaction
Political Government policies, trade regulations, stability of scale and a leverage the costs between all
Economic Market trends, inflation, interest rates, good cost/value existing system to stakeholders
unemployment ratio reduce costs.
Quality Simplify Make use of the Reduce conversion
Social Cultural trends, demographics, lifestyle changes processes, making best-of-breed steps and lower the risk
Technological Emerging technologies, innovation trends them less technology of errors through
Environmental Sustainability concerns, climate change, complex. components. streamlined processes.
environmental policies Speed Manage optimal Leverage pre-built Support the entire
throughput components to process with integrated
Legal Laws and regulations like labor laws, health and throughout the speed up the processing, improving
safety, compliance issues entire process implementation of efficiency and
new functionality. responsiveness.
Lec 6: Technology Excellence
• Business innovation increasingly relies on technology. Lec 7: Achieving and Sustaining Business IT Alignment
• Evolving IT Responsibilities: From supporting complete Challenges Faced by Organizations:
applications- To choose an ecosystem of technologies
• The aim of IT is to provide the necessary functionality and capabilities • Difficulty in leveraging IT for long-term benefits.
tailored to the specific needs of each business area. • Even with global evidence, many struggle to harness IT's
transformative power for industries and markets.
The Shift in IT's Role and Strategy
How Can Companies Achieve Alignment?
• IT used to be responsible for managing applications and infrastructure,
ensuring they met the business's current needs. Path to Alignment: Achieving alignment involves addressing specific
• Now, IT acts as a supplier of tools and technologies that not only meet enablers and inhibitors.
current needs but also help prepare for future business requirements. • Enablers: Factors that facilitate alignment.
• To achieve technology excellence, the IT strategy must be complete, • Inhibitors: Substances or elements that slow down or prevent
open, and integrated to achieve technology excellence. progress.
Complete IT Strategy: aligns with the overall business strategy,
Enablers Inhibitors
ensuring that corporate strategy and IT strategy work together to Senior executive support for IT Senior executives do not support
achieve strategic goals. IT
• Supports all business elements: Administrative systems, Collaboration IT involved in strategy IT fails to meet its commitments
development
and decision-making, Mobile needs, Stakeholder relationship
IT understands the business IT does not understand business
management, Business innovation
Business/IT partnership IT/business lack close
• Goes beyond the IT department and is included in the business strategy relationships
Well prioritized IT projects IT does not prioritize well
Open IT Strategy: anticipates future technological developments, IT demonstrates leadership IT management lacks leadership
preparing for emerging tools that users might adopt or that don't yet
exist.

From removing barriers to driving strategy, IT now creates options for

future, unknown business needs.
 Twelve Components of Alignment: 8. Systemic Competencies: unique capabilities of IT services that
enable a company to gain a competitive edge.

• Access to crucial information.

• Supporting the creation and achievement of a company's strategies.

9. IT Governance
• Describes how authority for IT resources, risks, conflict resolution,
and responsibilities is shared.
• Promotes collaboration among business partners, IT management, and
service providers.
• Project selection and prioritization processes are integral components.

IT Infrastructure and Processes

Business Strategy
10. Architecture
1. Business Scope
• Defines technology priorities, policies, and choices.
• Defines the markets, products, and services in which the enterprise • Ensures seamless integration of applications, software, networks,
competes. hardware, and data management into a cohesive platform.
• Includes target customer/client groups and operational locations.
• Considers competitors and potential competitors that influence the 11. Processes
business environment. Practices and activities for:
2. Distinctive Competencies • Developing and maintaining applications.
• Core strengths and success factors that give the company a • Managing IT infrastructure effectively.
competitive advantage 12. Skills
• Core Competencies: Includes strengths in brand, services, research,
manufacturing, product development, cost/pricing structure, and Focuses on IT human resource management, covering key aspects such
sales/distribution channels. as:

3. Business Governance • Recruitment and termination processes (hire/fire).

• Strategies to motivate IT personnel.
• Defines the roles between management, stockholders, and the board • Training and educational programs to enhance skills.
of directors. • Fostering a supportive and innovative organizational culture.
• Government Regulations: Includes the impact of laws and policies on
the company. Lec 8: Strategic Alignment as a Process
• Strategic Alliances: Covers management of relationships with Maximizing Alignment Enablers and Minimizing Inhibitors
strategic partners.
A six-step approach to achieving strategic alignment:
Organization Infrastructure and Processes
• Step 1: Set the goals and establish a team.
4. Administrative Structure • Step 2: Understand the business-IT linkage.
• Step 3: Analyze and prioritize gaps.
• Defines how the firm organizes its operations.
• Step 4: Specify the actions (project management).
• Ex: Includes organizational types like: Centralized, Decentralized,
• Step 5: Choose and evaluate success criteria.
Matrix, Horizontal, Vertical, Geographic, Federal, Functional
• Step 6: Sustain alignment.
5. Processes
Step 1: Set the goals and establish a team.
• How a company's business activities are organized and flow.
A clear direction for the organization is important before selecting
• Key Issues:
technologies.
- Value-Added Activities: Ensuring that every process contributes
directly to creating value for the customer or business, eliminating Key questions to address related to organizational goals:
unnecessary or wasteful tasks.
- Process Improvement: Continuously analyzing and refining • Is the organization trying to improve its products and services?
processes to make them more efficient, effective, and aligned with • Is it trying to enhance customer relationships?
business objectives. • Is it trying to strengthen its competitive position?

6. Skills Crucial Steps:

• HR considerations such as: • Define goals and market the objectives of the assessment.
- Hiring and firing, • Negotiate for:
- Motivating employees, - An executive sponsor.
- Training and education, - A business champion.
- Organizational culture. - A cross-functional team.

IT Strategy Key Enablers:

7. Technology Scope: Key information applications and technologies • Senior Executive Support: The highest-level business executive must
essential to the organization. sponsor the assessment.
 • Cross-Functional Team: Step 6: Sustain Alignment
- Team of 6-12 executives from major business units and IT.
- Team members must have credibility and business knowledge. Challenge: Achieving IT-business alignment is difficult, but sustaining
- IT involvement is critical to developing the strategy. it is even harder.

Step 2: Understand Business-IT Linkage Key to Sustaining Alignment: Develop and cultivate alignment
behavior.
Purpose: to establish a clear understanding of the linkage between IT
and the business. Benefits:

Crucial Steps: • Improved potential for complete alignment.

• Enhanced ability to gain business value from IT investments.
• Evaluate the current and future business and IT environments.
• Assess all 12 strategic alignment components thoroughly. Characteristics of Successfully Aligned Organizations
• Encourage Open Discussion: Focus Areas:
- Avoid time constraints when discussing the future.
- Use brainstorming techniques to facilitate meaningful discussions. • Equal Balance: Weighing IT and business capabilities equally.
• Skill Development: building the right skills in IT and business teams
Key Outcomes: • Team Empowerment: Teams are encouraged to work together and
• 3rd Enabler: Enhances IT’s understanding of the business. make decisions as a group.
• 4th Enabler: Results in stronger relationships across the organization • Outcome Agreement: IT and business teams agree on the desired
because of the mutual understanding. results
• Urgency: a sense of urgency in managing IT projects, ensuring that
Step 3: Analyze and Prioritize Gaps IT solutions are delivered quickly and efficiently.
• Customer Value: uses IT to improve the customer experience,
Purpose: Assess and prioritize gaps between the current and future leading to better value for customers.
states of the 12 alignment components. • Open Culture: Promoting a culture of open human communication.
Crucial Steps: IT Governance Practices
• Defines the primary content for the business and IT strategies. Maintaining and expanding the relationship between business and IT
• Use brainstorming sessions with the assessment team to identify and teams established during the six-step process.
focus on gaps.
• Prioritize IT projects that leverage business opportunities (5th Role of IT Executive Steering Committee:
Enabler)
• Establish an IT governance direction.
Final Review: The prioritized list of projects is presented to the sponsor • Ensure all enablers are maintained.
and senior executives for approval. • Provide a platform for IT leadership.

Step 4: Specify the Actions Focus of IT Governance:

Purpose:Define the actions needed to implement the recommendations. • Prioritize and select projects effectively.
• Appropriately allocate IT resources.
Focus Areas (Infrastructure Domains):
Lec 9: Evaluation Framework
• Policies: Establish the required policies.
• Designed to assess IT and business alignment within an organization
• Processes: Develop or redesign business and IT processes.
• 23 Criteria- under 4 groups
• Skills: Identify and acquire the necessary skills.
Design Related Group
Project Management Questions to Address:
Purpose: Focuses on the design aspects of the model and its original
• What are the deliverables?
construction
• What needs to be done?
• What is the completion date? Key Features:
• Who is responsible?
• What are the risks? • Examines different domains of the model.
• Highlights the relationship between organizational business and IT
Step 5: Choose and Evaluate domains.
1. Conceptualizing the IT (Understanding how IT is structured and
Purpose: Define success criteria to assess the implementation of the
its role in the organization.)
action plan.
2. Architecture Consideration (Ensuring the IT model has a strong
Measurement criteria are aligned with the organization’s strategic and scalable structure.)
goals. 3. Consideration of Business Goals (Making sure the IT system
aligns with the company's main objectives.)
Commonly Used Success Criteria: 4. Modularity (Breaking down IT components so they can be easily
• Sustainability: Ability to maintain an advantageous market modified or replaced.)
position. 5. Method of Development (Following a clear and effective
• Flexibility: Potential to revise and adapt strategic choices. approach when building IT systems.)
• Economics: Financial analysis of tradeoffs across value Organizational Related Group
dimensions.
Purpose: Focuses on governance and the structuring of IT and business
functions within an organization.
6. Organizational Size (Adjusting IT strategies based on how big or Development Team perspectives
small the company is.)
7. Leverage IT Capabilities (Using IT tools and resources effectively Quality Attributes Measurement of
to improve business functions.) Maintainability The ease at which the system is capable
8. Futurity (Ensuring IT solutions are future-proof and adaptable to of undergoing changes.
changes.) Reusability The extent in which functions or parts of
the system is used in another.
9. Domain Specific (Customizing IT systems to fit the specific needs
of the industry or business sector.) Flexibility How well a system can adapt to
requirements changes.
Analysis Related Group Modifiability The ability of a system to cope with
changes, incorporate new, or remove
Purpose: ensures an in-depth analysis of how business and IT operate existing functionality.
within an organization. Testability How easy it is to demonstrate errors
through executable tests.
10. Assessment Purpose (Clearly defining why the IT system is being Conceptual Integrity Consistency across the entire system,
evaluated and what goals it should achieve.) Ex- following naming conventions.
11. Level of Correspondence (Measuring how well IT solutions align
with business requirements.) End Users’ perspectives
12. Information Strategy Content (Checking if the IT strategy
Quality Attributes Measurement of
includes all necessary data and information for decision-making.)
13. Level of Planning (Ensuring there is a detailed and structured Availability Amount of time the system is operational
over a set of time.
plan for IT implementation.)
Interoperability Ability of your systems to understand
14. Level of Business Aspects (Evaluating how deeply business
communications and share data with
functions are integrated into IT planning.) external systems.
15. Measurability of Alignment (Ensuring that the relationship Security System’s ability to protect sensitive data
between IT and business can be measured and tracked.) from unauthorized and unauthenticated
use.
Utility Related Group
Performance The system’s throughput and latency in
Purpose: ensures that the model is practical and usable in an response to user commands and events.
organizational setting. Usability The ease at which the system’s functions
can be learned and used by the end users.
16. Flexibility (Making sure IT systems can adapt to new business
Importance of Quality in a System:
needs without major changes.)
17. Risk Aversion (Reducing the chances of IT-related failures and A high-quality system does not need to be more “complex”. Instead, it
security threats.) should be efficient, maintainable, usable with detailed and up-to-date
18. Strategic Fit (Ensuring IT strategies align with long-term business documentation.
goals.)
19. Strategic Integration (Making sure IT is smoothly integrated into
all business processes.) -----------------------------------The End------------------------------
20. Complexity of Use and Apply (Ensuring IT systems are not overly
complicated and can be used efficiently.)
21. Effectiveness & Efficiency (Checking if the IT system delivers
good results with minimal resources.)
22. Sharing Responsibility & Risk (Distributing IT-related risks and
responsibilities across teams effectively.)
23. Error Accumulation (Minimizing errors in IT systems so they
don’t build up over time and cause problems.)

Lec 10: Quality Attributes

Quality of a system is determined by quality attributes.

Quality attributes: measurable properties of a system

- used to measure a system’s design, run time performance, & usability.

- For an attribute to be measurable, there must be an objective way to
quantify it. For example:
o System Availability → Measured by uptime percentage.
o Performance → Measured using response times, throughput,
and latency.
- These attributes are crucial for evaluating system effectiveness from
two key perspectives:
• Development Team Perspective – Focuses on the system’s
internal structure and maintainability.
• End Users’ Perspective – Focuses on the system’s usability and
real-world effectiveness.