Value-Based Business-IT Alignment in Networked Constellations of Enterprises

Business-ICT alignment is the problem of matching ICTservices with the requirements of the business. In businesses of any significant size, business-ICT alignment is a hard problem, which is currently not solved completely. With the advent of networked constellations of enterprises, the problem gets a new dimension, because in such a network, there is not a single point of authority for making decisions about ICT support to solve conflicts in requirements these various enterprises may have. Network constellations exist when different businesses decide to cooperate by means of ICT networks, but they also exist in large corporations, which often consist of nearly independent business units, and thus have no single point of authority anymore. In this position paper we discuss the need for several solution techniques to address the problem of business-ICT alignment in networked constellations. Such techniques include: • RE techniques to describe networked value constellations requesting and offering ICT services as economic value. These techniques should allow reasoning about the matching of business needs with available ICT services in the constellation. • RE techniques to design a networked ICT architecture that supports ICT services required by the business, taking the value offered by those services, and the costs incurred by the architecture, into account. • Models of decision processes about ICT services and their architecture, and maturity models of those processes. The techniques and methods will be developed and validated using case studies and action research. Paper type: Research position paper