STRATEGIC AND ARCHITECTURAL ALIGNMENT: A CIO PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Businesses’ relationship with technology has become increasingly important in today’s increasingly chaning world and there are few companies that don’t have technology or IT in their core business. However, many struggle to get IT in line with the overall business (alignment). Since IT has become crucial in many organizations, especially in the areas of sustainability, support and growth of the business, the position and role of the CIO has become central and increasingly influential in overall strategy and business processes to create business value through IT. The traditional and main task for the CIO concerns the IT strategy, resources and business strategies and goals, which connects to strategic alignment. However, architectural alignment that touches upon business architecture versus IS architecture has recieved greater attention in recent years, especially in different dimensions of architectural alignment, including functional, structural and infological alignment. It has therefore been of interest to examine the traditional strategic alignment from a CIO perspective but also newer topics that have received a greater attention in recent years, which in this case concern architectural alignment from a CIO perspective. The study is based on a qualitative study including nine respondents holding the title CIO or works as the highest executive IT in their respectively organization. The study has answered the research question: How are CIOs addressing strategic and architectural alignment? According to the analysis, none of the dimensions of architectural and strategic alignment are addressed to 100%. Strategic alignment and the functional dimension of architectural alignment are predominantly addressed. However, some aspects of each alignment-dimension are more adressed than others, including the structural dimension of architectural alignment. Lastly, the infological dimension of architectural is predominantly not addressed.