Alignment Between Business Process Governance and IT Governance

The importance of business processes and the increasing centrality of IT to an organization’s performance have called for a specific focus on business process governance and IT governance in contemporary enterprises. Despite the wide scope of business process management, which covers both business and IT domains, and the profound impact of IT on process innovations, the association between business process governance and IT governance remains under-explored. Analyzing the constituting elements of the two governance concepts, we propose the necessity of alignment between business process and IT governance frameworks to enable business-IT strategic alignment, efficient process and IT requirements specification, and IT-enabled business value realization. We examine the actuality of this alignment in practice through a case study conducted in a relatively mature multinational corporation. The findings indicate the presence of mutual adjustment between business process and IT management functions to support strategic and operational process and IT decision making.