It Agility Research Review: Thematic Analysis and Categorization of literature

Business agility has been studied by researchers since the beginning of 1990s. With the increased diffusion of information technology (IT) in business, IT is often been brought up as a factor pushing for agility as well as being a potential enabler for agility. As a result, IT organisations need not only to better understand business agility but also their own agility and their role in promoting and enabling business agility. However, agility in IT and its link to business agility is still an emerging topic and there is a lack of a comprehensive view of relevant aspects and themes contained in this topic. Through an extensive literature review and analysis we have arrived at eight dominating themes that researchers regard relevant and critical to IT agility and its interplay with business agility. These are: ‘Strategic Business-IT Alignment’, ‘Management and Leadership’, ‘Organization Structure and Culture’, ‘People, Skills and Capabilities’, ‘IT Infrastructure, ‘IS Development and Delivery’, ‘System Capabilities’, and ‘Information Capabilities’. We have also categorized the reviewed literature in terms of these themes showing clearly that all these eight themes are well substantiated in research.