an approach for developing business architecture, an essential.pdfVIP

Conference for Information Systems Applied Research 2011 CONISAR Proceedings Wilmington North Carolina, USA v4 n1841 _________________________________________________ An Approach for Developing Business Architecture, an Essential Enabler for Business and IT Alignment Chingmei Li connie8179@ Modis, Inc. Annette Lerine Steenkamp asteenkam@ College of Management Lawrence Technologies University Southfield, MI, USA Abstract The business and Information Technology (IT) alignment issue has become one of the top ten IT management issues since 1980. Since then IT has strived to achieve alignment with business goals and objectives through many efforts. Enterprise Architecture (EA) to provide the foundation of IT in an organization and has been extensively covered in the past two decades with most of the efforts focusing on Technology Architecture, Information Architecture and Application Architecture and less emphasis on Business Architecture (BA). This research developed an approach with supporting methodology to develop a comprehensive BA, and to address and improve business / IT alignment following a qualitative research methodology. The research was based on 1. the proposition that a comprehensive BA is required to enhance Business IT alignment, and 2. that the BA should be developed before the Information Architecture, Application Architecture, and Technical Architecture. The key d