Step 2.2 - How Aligned Are You

How Aligned Are You?

IT-business alignment has long been among the top concerns for CIOs. Poor alignment leads to

failed projects, wasted resources, and the pursuit of initiatives that do not contribute to

competitive advantage. Start improving the alignment between IT and business by identifying

your strengths and weaknesses. Use this article and its associated tool to measure your

alignment and establish a baseline for improvement.



Action Plan



Use Info-Tech's "IT/Business Alignment Measurement Tool" to What Presents an

score your alignment across six dimensions, including Obstacle to IT-Business

Communication Maturity, Competency/Value-Measurement Alignment?

Maturity, Governance Maturity, Partnership Maturity, Architecture

and Technology Maturity, and Human Resources Maturity. Arbitrarily capping IT

spending (according to 79

Our approach has been adapted from a similar one advocated by percent of CIOs).

Professor Jerry Luftman from the Stevens Institute of Technology.

The same methodology has also been used by over sixty Global IT budgeting practices (39



2000 companies, and is a derivative of the Capability Maturity percent of CIOs).



Model developed by Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Poor governance practices

Institute. (26 percent of CIOs).



1. Gather a team of IT and business representatives to - CIO Insight, Nov. 2003

conduct the assessment. Go through the 38 sections

and come to a consensus as to your company's rating for

each issue. This should either take the form of a facilitated group session, or as an

independent activity where individuals meet afterwards to discuss the results. Be

honest with your assessment - no one's perfect (global companies that completed the

assessment for the first time generally rated their companies as a two overall, with

some alignment practices rated as threes). Divergent opinions among IT and business

reps should signify o