A framework for integrating IT governance and business/IT alignment principles.

Highly information-intensive organisations such as retail banks continuously struggle with the key issues of controlling their IT-value and achieving business-IT alignment. One main reason might be that decision makers in retail banks do not use methods to plan or improve their business-IT alignment. This study provides such a method, combining principles of two well known concepts: IT governance and strategic alignment. The developed framework provides an allocation scheme for dividing strategic IT decisions between the business and IT domain by describing practical concepts to tackle the business-IT alignment enigma. The framework is validated by interviewing a number of experts from Dutch retail banks that are strongly challenged to optimise their IT value through business-IT alignment. The validation study largely supports the applicability of the framework. Furthermore, this study provides a window of opportunities to apply it to other industries, countries or specific IS/IT applications. (aut. ref.)