Identification of factors affecting the maturity of IT-business strategic alignment

Achieving IT-business alignment has been a long-standing critical information management issue. Alignment becomes increasingly important as companies expand the role of IT to one that provides competitive business advantage by enabling and driving innovative business strategies.; The findings of this study further extend strategic alignment research, providing a deeper understanding of the process of IT-business strategic alignment, by empirically testing and validating a theoretical model of the maturity levels of the management practices and strategic IT choices that facilitate alignment.; A survey was conducted of 116 IT and business executives from ten business units across seven organizations consisting of one government agency, two chemical manufacturers, and four firms within the financial and insurance industry. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the existence of six factors of maturity (Communications, Competency and Value Measurement, Governance, Partnership, Scope and Architecture, and Skills) and identified 23 items to measure the maturity of strategic alignment management practices.; This study found that the items comprising the Governance Maturity dimension were considered by the respondents as most mature and the items comprising Competency and Value Measurement Maturity were least mature in the organizations participating in this study.; A mixed model repeated measures ANOVA obtained significant results for both the main effect and interaction effect of differences for the six SAM factors across the ten business units. These findings suggest that the assessment instrument can be used by organizations to improve their SAM levels.; Discriminant function equations were developed to estimate the impact of each of the SAM factors on respondents knowing their IT and business objectives; Communications Maturity was the most prominent predictor of respondents knowing their IT objectives and Governance was the most prominent predictor of respondents knowing their business objectives.; The research instrument developed by this study provides a tool for practitioners to assess the current maturity level of the IT-business alignment management practices and strategic IT choices in place in their organization and to improve upon them by providing managers with best practices that help facilitate the IT-business alignment of information technology strategies, objectives, and goals with those of the business.