Design of Situational Artefacts—Conceptual Foundations and Their Application to IT/Business Alignment

IT/business alignment is consistently rated as the #1 problem for CIOs of all kinds and sizes of companies. Although IS research has proposed a plethora of hypotheses and artefacts to explain and approach IT/business alignment problems, the large variety of goals and context factors seem to prevent effective solutions: Since companies face diverse challenges in achieving a high degree of IT/business alignment, a universal “one size fits all” approach seems not to be appropriate. IT/business alignment is therefore regarded as a class of relevant, important design problems that requires a situational solution approach. The conceptual foundations of situational problem analysis and artefact design are summarized, and a generic approach is proposed that transforms problem analysis into artefact design. The approach is then applied by decomposing the IT/business alignment problem into tangible qualities for business, IT systems, and IT governance. An explorative survey among 174 professionals is used to identify four clusters of IT/business alignment problems which each represent the current state according to certain qualities and also the priorities for future development. Using the proposed situational solution approach, four reference solutions are outlined.