IT Agility A Conceptual Model and an Empirical Assessment of Organizations in Sweden

Abstract

Enterprise agility in manufacturing, supply chain and other businesses have been addressed by researchers since the beginning of 1990s. With the increased diffusion of information technology (IT) in business both at the operational and strategic level, IT is often been brought up as a factor pushing for business agility as well as being a potential agility enabler. As a result, IT organisations need to better understand enterprise agility and changes affecting the business but also their own role in promoting and enabling firm agility. This research has developed a concept for IT agility and applied it through a quantitative survey in determining the IT agility level of organizations in Sweden. The IT agility concept, developed through an extensive literature review, suggests that in order for organizations to be IT agile, they need to think and act in an agile way in a number of areas (dimensions) at the same time. Eight dimensions have been identified which constitute the cornerstones of the IT function and its interaction with the business namely; Strategic IT-Business Alignment, Management and Leadership, Organisation Structure and Culture, People and Skills, IT Infrastructure and Standards, IS Development & Delivery, System Capabilities, and Information Capabilities. Each dimension is described and operationalised through 5-10 agile characteristics. The survey, being based on these dimensions and their agile characteristics, showed that IT agility is highly important for Swedish organizations; however their current IT agility level is only around 50 on a scale between 0 and 100. The amount of active work undertaken in Swedish organizations to achieve and improve IT agility is also modest. In order to achieve higher performance and stronger competitive advantage, Swedish and other organisations should cultivate their IT workforce and IT capabilities in line with the characteristics of the eight dimensions of our IT agility model. In addition to being a useful conceptual framework for IT agility, our model can also be used as a powerful, tangible and practical tool for IT organisations to help with assessing and evaluating the degree of their IT enabled organisational agility, identifying existing gaps, and guiding in finding measures addressing those gaps.