Looking for Efective Ways of Achieving and Sustaining Business-IT Alignment Pedro Maia MALTA Algoritmi R&D Centre and Cicant R&D Center Escola de Comunicação, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias Lisboa, Portugal pedro.malta@ulusofona.pt Rui Dinis SOUSA Algoritmi R&D Centre Information Systems Department University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal rds@dsi.uminho.pt Abstract— Aligning Business and Information Technologies strategies has been a subject studied for a long time. Despite all the efforts, achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment remains a challenge requiring even more agility nowadays to keep up with the competition in a turbulent organizational environment. Past contributions are uncovered in this paper calling particular attention to the development of Enterprise Architecture as a way of addressing this challenge. However, this should be a process to be carried out in the most effective ways looking especially at time and costs. Having proposed frameworks as a point of departure to reflect on the ways they may or may not work in practice, a dialogical action research is proposed for this work involving a close interaction with consultant companies. The resulting improved expertise both from the researcher and practitioners involved should allow for the identification of the most effective ways of achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment. Keywords-component; Alignment, business, Information Technology, Enterprise Architecture, process I. INTRODUCTION IT and Business alignment has been a key concern for IT executives, ranking number one, except for 2007, from 2003 to 2008 [1]. Many authors have identified this type of alignment as a major issue [2] [3]. Not only is hard to achieve it, but also to maintain it [4]. Thus, looking for effective ways of achieving and maintaining alignment remains a challenge calling for more research to address what is still a major concern for IT executives [5] [6] [7] [8]. A. How to define alignment and what to align? As a first key concern, Business and IT strategies alignment is particularly significant. Market challenges as alliances between large and small companies, globalization of the enterprise, the increasing workforce of knowledge workers, the changes in leadership roles and skills from controlling to coaching, serving the widest range of customer needs and the rate at which new technology is introduced make this challenge even more difficult to face [9]. Alignment can be looked as “… applying IT in an appropriate and timely way, in harmony with business strategies, goals and needs…” [4]. It isn’t an isolated management action: “…. no single activity will enable a firm to attain and sustain alignment.” [10]. Important is also the training and education of IT professionals in business and leadership to achieve strategic alignment [11]. Alignment is also “… a continuous and dynamic synchronization of the capabilities inherent in the information infrastructure and the demands of strategy” [12]. Thus, if looked as a continuous process, adaptation and change are crucial issues that deserve particular attention. Henderson and Venkatraman, pointed out two characteristics for this process [2]:  a direct relation among economic performance and the ability of managers to create a “strategic fit” between “… the position of an organization in the competitive product-market arena and the design of an appropriate administrative structure to support its execution.”;  a “strategic fit” that is inherently dynamic. So alignment “…evolves into a relationship where the function of IT and other business functions adapt their strategies together.” [12]. Other words as harmony, linkage, fusion or integration are used to refer to this relationship usually known as alignment [13]. These words highlight a particular concern: to ensure that the organizational strategies must adapt to each other in a harmonious way. However, this is a relationship that grows exhibiting different maturity levels. Therefore, a Business-IT maturity model, namely, the Luftman’s [13] one, may help in looking at effective ways of achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment, a top ranked concern for IT executives [14].