Guidelines for Business and IT Alignment (BITA)

DEGREE PROJECT IN ELECTRONICS AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING, FIRST CYCLE, 15 CREDITS

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2020

Guidelines for Business and IT Alignment (BITA)

OMID HAZARA

Bachelor Thesis

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

Author

Omid Hazara <[email protected]>

Information and Communication Technology

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Place for Project

Stockholm, Sweden

Examiner

Thomas Sjöland


Academic Advisor

Mira Kajko-Mattsson


Industrial Advisor

Kent Johansson

Senior Technical Advisor, R&D Scania

III

Abstract

Today’s enterprises are operating in a highly complex environment with rapid disruptions from

different areas such as technology, regulations or market, all of them capable of bringing the

entire industry upside down. And many large organizations are adopting agile software

development methods as part of their continuous push towards higher flexibility and shorter

lead times. Agility, however, introduces challenges and problems for the engineering of

enterprises, yet few reports on organizational alignment in this regard are available in the

literature.

This problem of alignment between business/operations and IT has been around for as long as

computers have been introduced to the work offices and is still today an important issue for

enterprises of any kind. This thesis, therefore, tries to investigate the lack of insight or

fragmented knowledge regarding organizational design or architecture of modern enterprises

in both academia and industry.

The purpose of this thesis is to explicate the challenges and recommendations found in research

papers, industrial whitepapers and interviews in order to propose guidelines for achieving

better alignment. The goal of this thesis is to provide an inventory of available researches in

the area of Business and IT Alignment (BITA) and organizational science in order to help

suggest a basis for future research. For this purpose, a Design Science Research (DSR) strategy

has been followed in combination with a literature review accompanied by two rounds of

interviews as a means for data collection and evaluation.

The artefacts resulting from this thesis take the form of fifteen guidelines extracted using

coding analysis from the literature review and a first round of interviews at a major Swedish

vehicle manufacturing enterprise. The guidelines were subsequently evaluated in a second

round of interview with an industry expert reviewing the correctness and usefulness of the

guidelines. The results of the evaluation proved that guidelines were useful for both the

academia and industry experts. Hence, enabling the author to claim that a tentative proposition

has been achieved.

Keywords: Organization design, business-IT alignment, enterprise architecture, agile enterprise, digitalization, digital transformation, agile organization

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Sammanfattning

Dagens företag arbetar i en mycket komplex miljö med snabba störningar från olika områden

som teknik, regler eller marknader, som alla kan vända hela branschen upp och ner. Och många

stora organisationer använder sig av agila programvaruutvecklingsmetoder som en del av deras

kontinuerliga tryck mot högre flexibilitet och kortare ledtider. Agilitet eller snabbfothet medför

emellertid utmaningar och problem för konstruktion av organisationer, men få rapporter om

organisatorisk anpassning i detta avseende finns tillgängliga i litteraturen.

Detta problem med anpassningen mellan verksamhet och IT har funnits så länge datorer har

introducerats på arbetsplatserna och är än idag en viktig fråga för organisationer av alla slags.

Denna avhandling försöker därför undersöka bristen på insikt eller fragmenterad kunskap om

organisationsdesign eller arkitektur hos moderna företag i både den akademiska världen och

såväl industrin.

Syftet med denna avhandling är att beskriva de utmaningarna och rekommendationerna som

finns i forskningspapper, industriella vitböcker och intervjuer för att föreslå riktlinjer för bättre

anpassning. Målet med denna avhandling är att tillhandahålla en inventering av tillgängliga

forskningar inom området Business and IT Alignment (BITA) och organisationsvetenskap för

att kunna föreslå en grund för framtida forskning. För detta ändamål har en Design Science

Research (DSR) strategi följts i kombination med en litteraturstudie åtföljd av två

intervjuomgångar som ett medel för datainsamling och utvärdering.

Artefakterna som härrör från denna avhandling har formen av femton riktlinjer extraherade

med hjälp av kodningsanalys från litteraturstudien och en första intervjuomgång hos ett stort

svenskt fordonstillverkningsföretag. Riktlinjerna utvärderades därefter i en andra

intervjuomgång med en branschexpert som granskade riktigheten och användbarheten av

riktlinjerna. Resultaten av utvärderingen visade att riktlinjerna var användbara för både

akademin och branschexperter. Därför gör det möjligt för författaren att hävda att en preliminär

proposition har uppnåtts.

Nyckelord: Organisationsdesign, Verksamhet-IT-anpassning, företagsarkitektur, agilt företag,

digitalisering, digital transformation, agil organisation

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my great academic advisor Mira Kajko-Matsson for her great advice,

guidance, feedbacks and most of all for her positive attitude and patience towards my work.

I would like to express my gratitude to my great industrial advisor Kent Johansson at Scania

for introducing me to the problem subject and his great guidance, feedbacks and showed

interest and support for the work by engaging people.

I would like also to thank my examinator Thomas Sjöland for showing understanding and

patience towards my work and his fast and helpful responses whenever I contacted him.

Special thanks to the interviewees at Scania CV AB for the feedbacks they had given me as

well as for the interviews they participated in. Furthermore, I would like to thank industrial

interviewees Eskil Swende and Tomas Nilsson for their time by participating in interviews and

their feedbacks.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends who had to cope with “unavailable me”

during the thesis writing time. Special thanks to my parents for their support and encouraging

me to study.

Omid Hazara

IX

“Tactics is what you do when there is something to do; strategy is what you do

when there is nothing to do.”

Polish chess master Savielly Tartakower

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Table of Contents

List of Figures: ................................................................................................................................... XIII

List of Tables: ..................................................................................................................................... XIII

List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................................... XV

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Problem and Research Question ...................................................................................................2

1.2 Purpose and Goal ............................................................................................................................2

1.3 Research Method .............................................................................................................................2

1.4 Benefits, Ethics and Sustainability ................................................................................................2

1.5 Commissioned Work .......................................................................................................................3

1.6 Scope and Limitation.......................................................................................................................3

1.7 Definitions.........................................................................................................................................3

1.8 Thesis Outline ..................................................................................................................................4

2. Background ....................................................................................................................... 5

2.1 Agile Methods ..................................................................................................................................5

2.2 Business and IT Alignment .............................................................................................................6

2.3 Alignment via Architecture .............................................................................................................6 2.3.1 EA Frameworks ....................................................................................................................................................... 9 2.3.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of EA ................................................................................................................ 10

2.4 Alignment via Governance or Strategy .......................................................................................11

2.5 Alignment via Relationship ...........................................................................................................13

2.6 Related work ...................................................................................................................................15

3. Research Methodology ................................................................................................... 17

3.1 Research strategy ..........................................................................................................................17

3.2 Research phases ...........................................................................................................................18 3.2.1 Literature Study Phase ......................................................................................................................................... 18 3.2.2 Define Evaluation Model ....................................................................................................................................... 20 3.2.3 Interviews............................................................................................................................................................... 23 3.2.4 Design and Evaluation .......................................................................................................................................... 23 3.2.5 Finalize the Guidelines ......................................................................................................................................... 24

3.3 Research Methods .........................................................................................................................24 3.3.1 Quantitative and Qualitative Research ................................................................................................................ 24 3.3.2 Induction and Deduction ...................................................................................................................................... 25 3.3.3 Why Qualitative Research Approach?................................................................................................................. 25 3.3.4 Sampling Method in this Research ...................................................................................................................... 25

3.4 Research Instruments ...................................................................................................................25

3.5 Respondents ..................................................................................................................................26

3.6 Validity threats ...............................................................................................................................26

3.7 Ethical Requirements ....................................................................................................................26

4. Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 29

4.1 General Overview of Reviewed Papers .......................................................................................29

4.2 Detailed Review ..............................................................................................................................30

4.3 Guidelines from Literature Review ..............................................................................................33

5. Result of Interviews ........................................................................................................ 41

5.1 Result of The First Round of Interviews ......................................................................................41

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5.2 Guidelines Resulting from Interviews .........................................................................................45

6. Demonstration and Evaluation of Guidelines ................................................................ 51

6.1 Preliminary Version of Guidelines ...............................................................................................51

6.2 Evaluation of the Guidelines ........................................................................................................52

6.3 Final Guidelines .............................................................................................................................54

7. Analysis, Discussion and Validity Threats .................................................................... 57

7.1 Analysis ..........................................................................................................................................57

7.2 Discussion ......................................................................................................................................61

7.3 Validity Threats ..............................................................................................................................62

8. Conclusion, Limitations and Outlook ............................................................................ 63

Appendix A.1 ........................................................................................................................... 71

Appendix A.2 ........................................................................................................................... 73

Appendix B.1 ........................................................................................................................... 75

Appendix B.2 ........................................................................................................................... 77

Appendix C.1 ........................................................................................................................... 79

XIII

List of Figures:

Figure 1. Layers of Enterprise Architecture.

Figure 2. Zachman Framework Source: Zachman.com

Figure 3. TOGAF ADM Source: The Open Group

Figure 4. SAFe™ Framework, source: Scaledagileframework.com

Figure 5. Operating Models

Figure 6. Business Model Canvas

Figure 7. Overview of the Research Strategy

Figure 8. Overview of Research Phases in this Study

Figure 9. The Method Framework for Design Science Research with Research Strategies and

Knowledge Base (Johannesson and Perjons, 2014)

Figure. 10. Framework for Organizational Change

List of Tables:

Table 1. Inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Table 2. Presentation of respondents

Table 3a. Research papers and proposals

Table 3b. Research papers and proposals

Table 4: Presentation of respondents

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List of Abbreviations

BITA Business-IT Alignment

EA Enterprise Architecture

COBIT Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies

ITIL Information Technology Infrastructure Library

ITSM Information Technology Service Management

TOGAF The Open Group Architecture Framework

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1. Introduction

Today’s enterprises are operating in a highly complex environment with rapid disruptions from

different areas of technology such as cloud computing, Internet of Things, Cyber physical

systems, regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation or European Autonomous

Vehicles Act or market demands. In order to respond timely and appropriate to disruptions,

enterprises need to align their business and IT internally to meet the external challenges in their

environment. And crafting the right organization requires enterprises to reconsider their

practices for organizational design and decision making in order to remain viable in times of

such turbulence in environment (Nambisan, 2017, Jöhnk, 2020). This ability to keep up with

continuous and unexpected change or disruptions and respond properly in time is an essential

ideal quality of modern enterprises which is called agility (Dove, 1999).

Agile way of working, however, introduces challenges and problems for the engineering of

enterprises and their alignment or organization. And traditional enterprises often lack the

models, competencies, processes and technologies to meet today's challenges driven by a hyper

connected world, a flat world according to Fung et al. (2008). In order to succeed in this flat

world, enterprises must transform themselves into sustainable and digital enterprises. Implying

that the traditional matrixed organizations are about to transform. This transformation

introduces the need for positive disruptions in the business models, value chains, processes and

operating models, key performance indicators of an enterprise as well as the strategic use of

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Weichhart et al., 2016).

Aligning business and IT (BITA) in this regard has been and is a classic and important issue

for enterprises of any kind. With the emerging trends showing that lines between business and

technology are getting blurred (Colbert, 2016). And that researchers have acknowledged that

this is the time in which the business and IT organization needs to structurally re-strategize

themselves. Because of the fast pace of changing environment of business and IT and higher

levels of complexity in design and organization, the continuous alignment has become even

more challenging for today's enterprises than ever before, hence making the solution to the

problem a never-ending issue.

According to Gartner (2014), enterprises are facing the ‘digitalization era’, “moving from

running IT like a business within a business, into a period characterized by deep innovation

beyond process optimization, exploitation of a broader universe of digital technology and

information, more-integrated business and IT innovation, and a need for much faster and more

agile capability”.

The topic on organizational alignment in relation to agility, however, is not widely addressed

by research yet. The approaches focus on different perspectives and are often loosely coupled.

It is also unclear whether a traditional alignment with business/operations and IT as

strategically and operationally aligned but distinct entities might be favorable for agility. This

imposes the question on how business and IT alignment impacts organization of an enterprise.

To analyze the contrast agility vs. organization, there is a need to study and analyze common

ways for organizations to achieve agility and better alignment.

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1.1 Problem and Research Question

The problem statement of this thesis is that there is a lack of insight in or fragmented knowledge

regarding organizational design or architecture of modern enterprises, in both academia and

industry. Following a qualitative analysis on BITA, this thesis aims to investigate a possible

answer to the question: “How can enterprises align their business and IT?” So that the

components of the enterprise share a common understanding and are able to propose productive

modern IT solutions architecturally appropriate for both business/operations units and IT

department.

1.2 Purpose and Goal

The purpose of this thesis is to generate guidelines by explication of the challenges and

recommendations pinpointed in academic and industrial papers, and interviews in industry. To

subsequently help gain better understanding of alignment between business/operations and IT

in regard to the organizational design and architecture of enterprise. The thesis also touches on

the topic of agile organization and identifies the problems and challenges in achieving

alignment and thus difficulties in achieving the benefits of the system.

The overall goal of this thesis is to provide an inventory of available researches in the area of

BITA and organizational science and help suggest a basis for future research. Therefore, the

neglected factors and domains are highlighted, insight of which are necessary to achieve good

effects in development of business/operations hand in hand with IT.

1.3 Research Method

The research method used in this thesis is qualitative research method through a design science

paradigm followed by literature study and interviews. This type of research answers questions

related to why or how a certain phenomenon may occur, rather than how often it occurs. (Berg

and Lune, 2012) In addition to literature study, interviews are conducted and included to

investigate the problem in an organization by collecting the experts’ view as a means to

multimethod attitude to data collection and analysis proposed by Given (2008)

1.4 Benefits, Ethics and Sustainability

During the development of the study the maximization of research benefits held a central

position when considering ethics issues. Benefits and positive impacts from this thesis study

are long-term financial and strategical turnovers for businesses. But these benefits are not

limited to financial ones, benefits also include employees in the sense that better alignment

leads to better work environments. The predominant beneficiaries are the parties directly

involved such as interviewees and those participated. Additionally, researchers and research

organizations, enterprise architects, business managers and also roles such as chief digital

officers (CDO) and chief information officers (CIO) would benefit from the outcome of this

study.

As for the ethics the IEEE code of ethics for engineers are reserved. This, in the context of this

thesis, means that the author of this work is committed;

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• “to improve the understanding by individuals and society of the capabilities and societal

implications of conventional and emerging technologies including intelligent systems”

(IEEE code of ethics)

• “to seek, accept, and offer honest criticism of technical work, to acknowledge and correct

errors, and to credit properly the contributions of others” (IEEE code of ethics).

In terms of sustainability, all type of enterprises would benefit from the guidelines resulted

from this research in terms of economic benefits and also societal which means better

alignment would make work life of employees easier in these enterprises such as better work

environment to thrive in. Although the focus of research is to help gain alignment

business/operations with IT, it tries to not neglect the environmental aspects throughout the

process of study (wherever its application may be possible).

1.5 Commissioned Work

The writing of this bachelor thesis has been in collaboration with Research and Development

(R&D) department at Scania CV AB. Scania as a company was formed in 1911 through the

merger of Södertälje-based Vabis and Malmö-based Maskinfabriks-aktiebolaget Scania. The

company is a major Swedish manufacturer of commercial vehicles – specifically heavy trucks

and buses. It also manufactures engines, marine and general industrial applications. As of 2008

the company is owned by the Volkswagen Group and has production facilities and assembly

plants in many countries all around the world.

1.6 Scope and Limitation

This study will focus on the the different perspectives of alignment in regards to operations of

business and IT. And in this context guidelines facilitating better alignment between the

elements of enterprise are provided, understanding and awareness of which contribute to better

collaboration, coordination and overall alignement. Provided purspose and goal sets the limits

of not going further into details of for example a specific area but to give an overall view of

both academica and industry.

1.7 Definitions

There are a number of definitions required to better localize what different concepts mean in

the framework of this thesis. They are therefore described in the Table 1.6 as presented

below:

“Alignment” is the capacity to demonstrate a positive relationship between information

technologies and the accepted financial measures of performance.

“Capability” refers to any ability, competency and resources need for a business to propose

as a value offering (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2002).

“Digital Transformation” in the context of organizations, transformation is a fundamental

change that significantly alters an organization’s relationship with one or more of its key

constituencies, such as customers, employees, suppliers and investors (Proper et al. 2017). And

in the context of digital economy, it means transforming and reconfiguring the structures.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-019-00605-3#ref-CR38

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“Enterprise” refers to any collection of organizations with a common set of goals and/or a

single bottom line (Lankhorst, 2017, p.2). This includes all kinds of human collaborations

such as companies, governmental agencies, healthcare institutions, supply chains, and also

the organization or murmuration of starlings.

“Guidelines” are list of advises, synthesis of the obtained research results.

“Legacy System” is a software system that exists in organizations and embodies much of the

organization’s processes and knowledge.

1.8 Thesis Outline

This thesis consists of the following chapters:

Chapter 2: Background describes the extended background and state of the art in the area,

the definitions and concept are also explained to help the reader understand the problem area.

Chapter 3: Research Method describes the research approach followed in this study. It

elaborates on the techniques used to realize the research goal.

Chapter 4: Literature Review presents the findings from the literature review and provides

scientific perspective to the research.

Chapter 5: Interviews at Case Organization presents the result of interviews at the case

organization. The status of operations, its methods and problems

Chapter 6: Demonstration and Evaluation of Guidelines presents research results in form of

guidelines and provides perspective of both scientific literature and industry, in order to give

a fairly complete picture of the results.

Chapter 7: Analysis, Discussion and Validity Threats discuss and analyze the findings along

with the measures that were taken to mitigate the validity threats.

Chapter 8: Conclusion and Outlook provides a summary of the research, the limitations of

this research and proposes directions for future research.

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2. Background

This chapter presents the state of the art, describes and provides an overview of the concept of

Agility and business-IT alignment. Section 2.1 describes the agile methodology in brief and

Section 2.2 presents an introduction and describes different approaches toward alignment of

business and IT. Section 2.3 describes how Enterprise Architecture are used as an approach for

alignment. And then in Section 2.4 alignment via governance or strategy is described, thereafter

alignment via relationship or communication is described in Section 2.5 and finally related

works to this thesis theme is briefly described in Section 2.6.

2.1 Agile Methods

Agile methods have been the center of attention for a quite some time since its establishment

in 2001 and the term is used extensively in the IT industry where it came to be. And today,

more and more companies are interested in this way of working. The main idea with the agile

development model is that it is software oriented. The philosophy is to get a clear and simple

prototype (minimum viable product) to demonstrate to the customer as soon as possible.

Minimum resources are spent on documentation in this way of work which is unlike plan-

driven methods such as the waterfall model where a lot of time is spent on design and

documentation. Typical for agile methods is that development is performed incrementally, and

a demonstrable prototype is desired after each iteration or sprint.

Agile methods are especially suitable for systems where the system requirements are variable

or flexible and have been especially useful in the development of small to medium software

systems. One explanation for this is that a client of a software system may find it difficult to

predict in advance what functions can be useful and what not. The agile development methods

have been successful in this regard, since they can more easily receive feedback from the client

after each iteration (agile manifesto).

The reason why agile methods have recently become popular is partly due to a recent change

in how people live and how information is consumed. Trends are coming and going at a furious

pace, and it is important for companies to produce products quickly and according to customers'

wishes in order to avoid falling behind. Livari and Livari (2010) believes that the use of agile

methods may be the result of a prevailing trend in the industry. At the same time, he continues

to argue about arguments that are often given by advocates of Agile Project Methods, that the

market is experiencing an ever-increasing turbulence and uncertainty in our environment,

which results in companies being forced to adapt in order to respond more quickly to changes

(Livari and Livari, 2010). Noteworthy is that the adaptability is not to be taken as agility.

The basic idea of agile which is based on the close cooperation between the developer and the

client or the recipient requires a decentralized approach to decision making. There is great

focus on collaboration between individuals and role definitions is of secondary importance. At

the same time, this focus in companies and organizations has changed from that of replacing

manual processes with local systems to instead creating enterprise-wide IT systems, constantly

present with information, processes and real-time integration. Building, managing and

controlling solutions in this, more complex IT environment, has created a need for architecture

and, new roles in the companies. Roles such as system architect, solution architect, business

architect and alike have arisen with different types of tasks and responsibilities.

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2.2 Business and IT Alignment

Business-IT alignment (BITA) is a classic concept that exists to address the issue many

technology-intensive companies face. BITA can be defined as “managing and utilizing IT in

an organization to respond to business needs, achieve business goals and acquire competitive

advantages.” (Alaeddini et al., 2017). It includes a number of dimensions, out of which

particularly the strategic/intellectual, structural, social and cultural are identified in (Chan and

Reich, 2007).

Chan and Reich (2007) deem the strategic/intellectual dimension as the degree to which the

business and the IT strategy and plans complement each other. Structural alignment refers to

the degree of structural fit between business and IT. Structural alignment is characterized by

the (de)centralization of IT, the location of IT decision-making rights, reporting relationships

and deployment of IT personnel. The social dimension refers to the “state in which business

and IT executives within an organizational unit understand and are committed to the business

and IT mission, objectives, and plans.”

According to proposition by Alaeddini et al (2017), all methods and frameworks developed by

scholars to align business and IT can be contemplated at three levels:

• Alignment via Architecture: This approach utilizes architecture analysis and design

techniques to assure proper alignment. Architecture provides a holistic view of the whole

enterprise and therefore an approach to address BITA

• Alignment via Governance or Strategy: This approach has two major threads: IT service

management (ITSM) and Business Performance Management (BPM). COBIT and ITIL are

other examples of technical models and frameworks for achieving this kind of alignment.

• Alignment via Relationship or Communication: This approach describes the state in which

business and IT executives/personnel within an organizational unit understand and are

committed to the business and IT mission, objectives and plans. Efforts are made to narrow

the “culture gaps” between business and IT people, which have been a major cause for

system development failure.

2.3 Alignment via Architecture

The concept of Enterprise Architecture (EA) has its origins in the explosive development that

took place in the software development field during the 1970s and 1980s. From a technical

perspective, modelling and architecture have a longer history. In hardware design, the notion

of architecture has been in use since the 1960s, pioneered by the likes of Amdahl, Blaauw, and

Brooks in their design of the IBM S/360 mainframe. In their research note Amdahl et al. (1964)

give probably the first definition of architecture in the IT world:

The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the

programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the

organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation.

Major advances in software development in conjunction with the breakthrough of the

microcomputers led many organizations to begin developing their own information systems

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aimed at adding value to the business. The result of this approach was the extensive

maintenance in complex information systems that grew beyond control and out of this problem

the discipline of EA was born, which is mainly aimed at creating better overview and

management of information systems in a business (Sessions, 2007). Although the field is more

than thirty years old its main promise of improving competitiveness in an increasingly

competitive world has not changed.

According to Sessions this is because of the ever-increasing system complexity in

organizations that spend more and more money into building advanced IT systems; and poor

business alignment to keep those increasingly expensive IT systems aligned with business

need. Bondar et al. (2017) suggest that EA is a discipline driving change within organizations

and therefore, the alignment and integration of business and IT is a strategic management

approach. Bondar et al. describe the management of EA change as a challenging task for

enterprise architects, due to complex dependencies amongst EA models, when evolving

towards different alternatives.

In the book “Enterprise Architecture: Modelling, Communication and Analysis” Marc

Lankhorst et al. (2017) compare the purpose of enterprise architecture to the kind of

architecture in building and construction: where there is a common framework/architecture,

since everyone knows what ”room”, ”door” or ”window” refers to, which makes

communication efficient. To provide an appropriate environment for alignment between

business and IT, EA describes a baseline architecture called As-Is state and then elaborates the

desired architecture called To-Be state, then represents the migration plan for transition from

the As-Is architecture to desired To-Be architecture for the enterprise (Finkelstein, 2006).

According to another study by Whittle and Myrick (2003), an EA strives to define the value

streams and their relationships to all entities and other value streams and events. It is a

definition of what the enterprise must produce to satisfy customers and be able to compete in

market, deal with its suppliers, sustain operations and care for its employees. It is composed of

architectures, workflows and events (Whittle and Myrick, 2003).

Figure 1. Layers of Enterprise Architecture.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10257-016-0336-5#ref-CR13

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A value stream in this regard is an end-to-end collection of activities that creates a result for a

“customer” who may be/not be the ultimate customer or an internal “end user” of the "value

stream". The value stream has a clear goal: to satisfy or to delight the customer (The Great

Transition by James Martin).

Enterprise Architecture strives to align business with information technology with given

business strategy, goals and drivers. Figure 1 shows the different abstraction layers an

architecture consists of, where Business is at the top of the triangle meaning that business uses

the data, application and technology layers in order to fulfill its purpose.

According to Ross et al. (2006), the EA is the organizing logic for business processes and IT

infrastructure, reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the company's

operating model. The enterprise architecture provides a long-term view of a company's

processes, systems, and technologies so that individual projects can build capabilities and not

only fulfill immediate needs. Companies go through five stages in learning how to take an

enterprise architecture approach to designing business processes.

1. Business silos: every individual business unit has its own IT and does local optimization.

And in this stage companies look to maximize individual business unit needs or functional

needs.

2. Standardized technology: a common set of infrastructure services is provided centrally and

efficiently providing IT efficiencies through technology standardization and, in most cases,

increased centralization of technology management

3. Optimized core: data and process standardization, as appropriate for the chosen operating

model, are provided through shared business applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning

(ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems which provide companywide

data and process standardization as appropriate for the operating model

4. Business modularity: loosely coupled IT-enabled business process components are

managed and reused, preserving global standards and enabling local differences at the same

time.

5. Dynamic venturing: rapidly reconfigurable, self-contained modules are merged seamlessly

and dynamically with those of business partners.

Ross et al. (2006) claim that “as a company advances through the stages, its foundation for

execution takes on increased strategic importance.”. Companies move through these stages by

first building and then leveraging a foundation for execution. Each stage involves

organizational learning about how to apply IT and business process discipline as strategic

capabilities. Advancing through the stages requires lots of persistence, but as companies

advance from the first stage to later stages, they realize benefits ranging from reduced IT

operating costs to greater strategic agility.

Ross et al. (2006) deems the level at which an organization can achieve agility is related to

these stages. Organizations that are at the first stage can only do local optimization, which

impedes a coherent agile response at the organization level if, for example, changing market

demands or regulatory pressure requires this. They describe further stages 2 and 3, where the

standardization and optimization at the technology level happen and how these facilitate a

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global response, and this within the bounds of the current business- and organization-level

structures. At stages 4 and 5, the business becomes adaptable, reconfigurable, and fluidly

integrated with its dynamic environment.

2.3.1 EA Frameworks

There are many frameworks used to theoretically or practically architect an organization.

Zachman Framework as the pioneer of the EA came to be in 1987 at IBM by John Zachman,

the framework was called after him later (Zachman, 1987). According to Zachman, "the

increased scope of design and levels of complexity of information systems implementations

are forcing the use of some logical construct (or architecture)." Zachman’s vision was that

business value and agility could best be realized by a holistic approach to systems architecture

that explicitly looked at every important issue from every important perspective. His multi-

perspective approach to architecting systems is what Zachman originally described as “an

information systems architectural framework” and soon renamed to be an enterprise

architecture framework.

The framework (see Figure 2) is based around the principles of classical architecture with a

vocabulary and set of perspectives for describing complex enterprise systems. It consists of

two dimensions, the first has six perspectives or views: Planner, Owner, Designer, Builder,

Subcontractor/Programmer, and User. The second-dimension deals with six basic

questions: What, How, Where, Who, When and Why. Although this framework is holistic

and perspective-centric, it does not provide guidance on sequence, process, or implementation,

but rather focuses on ensuring that all views are included, and a complete system is in place

regardless of the order in which they were established. The Framework has no explicit

compliance rules since it is not a standard written by or for a professional organization.

However, compliance can be assumed if it is used in its entirety and all the relationship rules

are followed (Urbaczewski and Myrdal, 2006).

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) was first developed in 1995 by the

Open Group and is used in organizations around the world (mostly by IT companies) and is

claimed to be an industrial standard within EA by the open group. TOGAF focuses on mission-

critical business applications that use open systems building blocks. A key element of this

framework is Architecture Development Method (ADM) that specifies a process for

developing enterprise architecture. TOGAF explains rules for developing good principles,

rather than providing a set of architecture principles.

The three levels of principles support decision making across the entire enterprise; provide

guidance of IT resources; and support architecture principles for development and

implementation. One reason for the success of TOGAF is that it is open to use without license

(The Open Group, 2020). The purpose is to contribute through methods and tools, to

communicate, create, use and maintain an EA. The framework is mainly used as support for

what is to be done within an EA work and to an extent how this should be done. This work is

described through an iterative process that focuses on reusing existing models and working

methods (ADM) (See Figure 3). It is important to see TOGAF as a support for EA, not a

product that is ready to use and must therefore be adapted to the organization within which the

framework operates.

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Figure 2. Zachman Framework Source: Zachman Figure 3. TOGAF ADM Source: The Open Group

SAFe - the Scaled Agile Framework - is a relatively new but increasingly popular framework

within IT industry (See Figure 4). In SAFe, Lean and various agile methods are used in

combination. In addition to managing teams, there is also best practice for how strategy and

architecture can be managed in an agile way. Agile approaches are a great help in improving

responsiveness to change. However, they are not the only approach and when applied

incorrectly, they can even harm the overall adaptivity of an enterprise. In general, the larger an

organization and the more interconnections and dependencies there are between its parts

(capabilities, resources, processes, systems), the more important enterprise architecture

becomes in improving adaptivity and aligning parts with overall strategic direction.

2.3.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of EA

Obviously, there are always risks and rewards included with every system and they cannot be

easily neglected and argued for. Therefore, in this section a list of benefits and disadvantages

of EA as an approach to BITA is covered. Ross et al. (2006) who has studied this area for

nearly three decades, gave their insight into the phenomenon of business and IT alignment and

suggest that EA is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure, reflecting

the integration and standardization requirements of the company's operating model. The

enterprise architecture provides a long-term view of a company's processes, systems, and

technologies so that individual projects can build capabilities and not only fulfill immediate

needs.

In smaller organizations, there are a few agile/DevOps teams and they are capable of

coordinating change amongst themselves, and the lines to management are short enough that

strategic direction from management can be delivered to teams directly. In large organizations,

however, there are often hundreds of agile teams, each working on a part of the big “enterprise

machine”, and a higher level of coordination is needed. If there are agile teams building agile

silos disregarding their environment, the end result will still not be adaptive and flexible. This

in turn makes the future change even more difficult, which is why good architecture is essential.

11

Figure 4. SAFe™ Framework, source: Scaledagileframework.com

This is where the “big picture” view offered by EA adds value, as it also encompasses other

stakeholders than users and includes desired and also unwanted business outcomes, capabilities

to be developed or improved, resources required, business processes, IT and physical

infrastructure to be realized, and more.

One of the biggest disadvantages EA has, is according to its critics its antipattern to agility,

because of “the big design upfront” that often is talked about. However, EA lays out the

strategy and foundation for a company to thrive in (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993; Ross et

al, 2006). According to proponents of EA, even if you disagree that it requires much time to

develop an architecture as holistic as the EA, you cannot deny the fact that the company always

has a strategy, hence EA as a strategy is one of the most powerful and heavily used in practice

trends nowadays which is also mentioned in several consequent years by the advisory firm

Gartner’s Hype cycle.

2.4 Alignment via Governance or Strategy

Alignment of Business units and IT is also considered to be a strategic approach. Therefore, it

is very related to the main objectives of the governance (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993;

Ross et al, 2006). According to Heier et al. (2012), governance is highly associated with

company’s capability to go faster, increase flexibility and innovation (Heier et al., 2012).

Explicit strategic guidance is given by the operating models of Ross et al. (2006). As they show

with numerous case studies, how “successful enterprises” employ an operating model with

clear choices on the levels of integration and standardization of business processes across

the enterprise (See Figure 5):

Diversification: different business units are allowed to have their own business processes. Data

are not integrated across the enterprise. For example, diversified conglomerates that operate in

different markets, with different products.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-28188-4_3#CR132_3

12

Figure 5. Operating Models

Replication: business processes are standardized and replicated across the organization, but

data are local and not integrated. For example, business units in separate countries, serving

different customers but using the same centrally defined business processes. For example, a

fast-food chain replicating its way of working through all its local branches.

Coordination: data is shared, and business processes are integrated across the enterprise, but

not standardized. Example: a bank serving its clients by sharing customer and product data

across the enterprise, but with local branches and advisers having autonomy in tailoring

processes to their clients.

Unification: global integration and standardization across the enterprise. For example, the

integrated operations and supply chain of a chemical manufacturing company.

In those operating models that recommend data integration or standardized processes, project-

level agility is bounded by these organization-level choices: For example, a project may not be

allowed to define its own business processes or data models but must comply with company-

wide standards. This at the organization level may enhance agility, because the organization is

explicit about its operational choices, therefore timely decision making is facilitated, and the

type of response to changes in the environment may be known beforehand. Moreover, use of

standardized processes or systems may help in quickly developing solutions to new

requirements.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is another “framework for integrating business

processes and supporting IT infrastructure as secure, standardized components-service that can

be reused and combined to address changing business priorities”. Based on this view, SOA will

be considered as management tool enabling alignment between business strategy and enterprise

architecture. In addition, SOA can also be viewed as an architectural style since it supports

service orientation. It consists of a set of interacting design principles including the use of loose

coupling, encapsulation and implementation of free interfaces.

Service-Oriented Software Development (SOSD) is another subject in software development

domain introduced by Keith et al. (2009) which consists of dividing the work of a specific

project into individual components called services. The method takes its name from SOA, in

which developers build applications from a collection of loosely coupled or independent

software services. In the SOSD methodology, there are teams within the big project teams that

act as service providers performing independent tasks in the software development process.

13

In the SOSD, interfaces between services or activities are explicitly defined, but the providers

of one service do not need to understand the inner workings of any other service. As a result,

sub-teams can perform their desired services required by the overall project plan using their

own unique methodology, whether plan-based or agile. For example, a typical project has

design, code, test, and deploy phases. Teams can divide each phase into distinct services to be

performed by individuals or small groups. Within the services, sub-services exist to provide

specific functionality. One type of sub-service for the development phase would be application

development with a database component. Another would be an application component with no

database.

When a project is in its planning stages, the team can select, and code needed services. The

project managers can then map available resources from the organization to the project

services. In this way, project planners can easily see the resources available to meet their needs.

Although the overall process of coordinating service providers’ individual efforts is formal and

plan-driven, each unique service can be executed using the methodology of the service

provider’s choice, including agile methods. (Keith et al., 2009)

Noteworthy to mention is the complication which is specific to mature organizations that use

IT governance frameworks such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL),

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) or Control Objectives for Information and

Related Technology (COBIT). These frameworks may ensure alignment of IT with business

goals and provide structure to IT development and management processes. However, in a

typical agile environment, structure established by a governance framework might hinder

progress at project level (Boehm and Turner, 2005).

2.5 Alignment via Relationship

Camponovo and Pigneur (2004) propose that “an accurate and detailed formalization of the

organization’s business model can facilitate the alignment with the information system”. This

way, a formal approach forces managers and IT staff to adopt a common vocabulary allowing

them to communicate and share their understanding of the business logic unambiguously

among each other (Fensel, 2001). Moreover, the process of modelling helps in identifying and

understanding the relevant elements in a specific domain and the relationships between them

(Morecroft, 1992).

In an early study in 1983 by Pyburn on strategic IT issues, the importance of cultural fit

between business and IT is highlighted as a precondition for successful Information Systems

(IS) planning. He argues that IS planning can validly adopt a personal-informal or a written-

formal approach, but that it needs to be aligned with cultural elements such as the business

planning style and the top management communication style to be effective.

The Business Model Ontology (BMO) presented in (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2002), which

later gave rise to the Business Model Canvas (BMC) (See Figure 6), is one of the very

important topics in the area of business development. It is about the conceptualization and the

formalization of a business model into elements, relationships, vocabulary and semantics of

the essential elements. This ontology is structured into a number of levels with increasing depth

and complexity. Out of which the very first level of decomposition of ontology contains the

four main elements of a business model:

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Figure 6. Business Model Canvas

The product innovation. This element essentially covers all aspects related to the value

proposition of the firm. This includes the set of benefices the firm proposes to its customers,

embodied in its products and services, and also the way in which it differentiates itself from its

competitors.

The customer relationship. This element describes the target customers, who are they, the

way a firm gets in touch with them (i.e. its distribution channels) and the mechanisms used to

acquire new customers and retain the current ones (i.e. to maintain a customer relationship).

The infrastructure management. This element describes the value configuration that is

required to deliver the value proposition and customer relationship. It is composed of (a) the

capabilities, the competencies and the resources needed for delivering the value proposition,

(b) the activity configuration (value chain, shop or network), and (c) the partner network

allowing the firm to access these resources and fulfil these activities.

The financials. This element is the culmination of the business model: a valid business model

must guarantee long-term financial success. It is composed of the company’s revenue model

and its cost structure, which finally define the profit of a firm.

According to Camponovo and Pigneur (2004) regarding the alignment point of view to this

way of modeling using ontologies, “if the business model/architecture has been defined using

such approach, the contribution of information system to the business logic of the firm can be

more accurately identified. Consequently, it would make it easier to work out the

functionalities that information systems are expected to perform in order to achieve a better

alignment with the business requirements of the firm.”

A formal business model would likewise facilitate the choice of the indicators of an executive

information system for monitoring the strategy implementation, an old example use of this is

a balanced scorecard approach with its financial, customer, internal business, and innovation

perspectives mentioned by Norton and Kaplan (1996).

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2.6 Related work

The field of BITA is amply researched and documented since its early days and there are many

studies taking different angles and investigate specific questions, yet the problem is still the

reality of both academic and industry. The BITA concept, which lays the groundwork for this

thesis approach, is described by Luftman (2000) for assessment of alignment, he characterized

five different levels of alignment (See Appendix B.1). There have been literature studies on

BITA (Chan & Reich, 2007; Aversano et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2018), but there are not many

studies presenting guidelines as artefact.

This approach is not explored and seems to be unusual to the subject area, given the fact of

both the academic literature review and state of practice in industry. However, majority of

studies done in the problem area are to some extent related to each other and share common

taxonomies and concepts and references used are often the same for example Henderson and

Venkatraman (1993) Strategic Alignment Model (SAM); or Luftman’s (2000) BITA Maturity

Assessment Model. They can therefore be useful in order to map the domain of BITA.

Krimpmann (2015) did also a literature review of BITA in terms of organization design. He

mentions the literature addressing the question of how the digital age changes the design

categories of an IT organization design. His findings show that most papers just analyze single

aspects of either IT relevant information or generic organization design elements but miss a

holistic ‘big-picture’ onto an IT organization design. And finally proposes a holistic framework

by taking the information systems research, the digital and the generic organization design

strands into consideration.

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3. Research Methodology

This chapter describes the research method and presents an overview of the research phases in

section 3.1 and then provide detailed descriptions in Section 3.2. The description and

motivation of the choice of research tools are provided in Section 3.3 and research tools used

in Section 3.4 and respondents in Section 3.5. Finally, the validity threats and ethical

requirements are described in Section 3.6 and 3.7 respectively.

3.1 Research strategy

In order to achieve solid and sound results and to address the research question properly, an

appropriate strategy was of significant importance to maximize the quality of the output within

the time slot assigned for the writing of this thesis. The overall strategy of the research is

presented in Figure 7. As shown in the figure, the strategy is based on the Design Science

Paradigm (DSP) with inductive reasoning approach. In design science paradigm the solution

is approached by seeking user insights first and then the best possible solution is designed

based on the findings.

Following components are found under this paradigm: (1) design of research phases, (2) choice

of research methods, (3) method for selecting respondents, (4) construction of research

instruments, (5) management of validity threats, and (6) consideration of ethical requirements.

Out of which the last two components are described in this chapter and discussed in Chapter 7.

Figure 7. Overview of the Research Strategy

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Figure 8. Overview of Research Phases in this Study

3.2 Research phases

The research phases are (1) Literature Study, (2) Define Evaluation Model, (3) Interviews (4)

Define Coding Schema (5) (Re-)Design and Evaluation and (6) Finalize the guidelines as

depicted in Figure 8 and these are described in Sections 3.2.1-3.2.5. Regarding the design

research paradigm as shown in Figure 9, research process followed its template in the following

way:

• Explicate problem corresponds to Interviews and Literature Study phase during which the

problem was identified and clarified.

• Outline Artefact and Define Requirements corresponds to define evaluation model

phase of the research.

• Design and Develop corresponds to the (Re-)Design and Evaluation phase during which

the preliminary version of guidelines was finalized.

• The last two activities Demonstrate Artefact and Evaluate Artefact were substituted

with the finalization phase, and because of the nature of artefact and difficulty to

demonstrate it, demonstration was not taken into consideration in this thesis as proposed

by DSP.

3.2.1 Literature Study Phase

During the literature study phases which happened parallel to other phases, relevant literatures

in the area of business-IT alignment and agile organization were studied. These studies were

conducted in order to lead to design of guidelines.

In the initial phase of the research, BITA was studied as a general literature study, this study

was later performed in depth because of its central importance. Thereafter, in order to design

the guidelines to answer the research question, a literature review was performed. Finally, the

literature study led to the study of Evaluation Model to be presented in Section 3.2.2.

The approach used to review literature was of traditional essence, meaning that scope and

amount of literature in the area were significantly big and therefore other types of literature

review such as systematic or semi-systematic would take much more time in order to give a

high quality answer to the research question. The main aim of the review was to discover the

key areas in BITA research; the challenges, recommendations, gaps and trends in the domain

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Figure 9. The Method Framework for Design Science Research with Research Strategies and

Knowledge Base (Johannesson and Perjons, 2014)

also by providing with necessary elements help capture the essence of current knowledge and

comment critically on where the interesting questions and inconsistencies lie.

Protocol used for the review follows the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and

Charters (2007); (a) inclusion and exclusion criteria for identification of the research (b) a

search strategy for the selection of relevant publications (c) Data extraction based on the

inclusion and exclusion criteria. (d) Finally, the collected materials were analyzed and

summarized (Kitchenham and Charters, 2007).

Three types of sources that were examined: (1) Scientific databases collected through Royal

Institute of Technology Library (KTHB): (IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Science Direct,

Google Scholar, Springer) and (2) Business research articles (Harvard Business Review, MIT

and Gartner) and finally, (3) Conferences such as the International Conference on Advanced

Information Systems Engineering, the Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference,

the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, and the International Conference on

Information Systems.

Keywords used for the search of relevant articles in titles and abstracts in the above sources

were combinations from three categories:

keywords on (1) alignment contents: ‘‘business and IT’’ ‘‘business’’ AND ‘‘IT’’ ‘strateg*’’

keywords on (2) alignment and guideline expressions: ‘‘align*’’ ‘‘coherenc*’’ and

‘‘synerg*’’ “challenges” OR “issues” “recommendations” OR “guidelines”

keywords on (3) organization: ‘‘business architecture’’ ‘‘enterprise architecture’’ ‘‘enterprise

model’’

Apart from the above keywords, several criteria were considered for further screening (See

Table 1). After the preliminary recovery of papers, two evaluation stages to ensure the

20

Table 1: Inclusion/exclusion criteria.

IC Papers that describe issues which deal with business-IT alignment and agile

organization

EC1 Papers that have not been written in English

EC2 Papers that have not got complete content or are only accessible through payment

EC3 Papers that are duplicated

EC4 Papers that do not meet the inclusion criterion

relevance of the papers were performed. In the first stage, called first filter, only the title and

the abstract of each paper were evaluated to accord inclusion criterion (IC) and exclusion

criteria (EC) and ensure that selected papers would be within the scope of the research question.

It is common to find papers with inconsistencies between the abstract and its full content.

Therefore, in the second filter, the reading of the full content of all the selected papers from the

1st filter was realized. Then, papers were included/excluded according to the same

inclusion/exclusion criteria. In order to determine the final set of publications for analysis,

Google Scholar’s citation count was also used as a proxy measure of relative importance of the

works also, but more emphasis was put on the credibility of authors and robustness of the

researchers work.

3.2.2 Define Evaluation Model

Before proceeding and rushing to results, the need for definition of an Evaluation Model

became obvious. Criteria chosen for evaluation of first round of interviews were:

Appropriateness. This criterion refers to fitness and suitability in terms of relevant knowledge,

position and experience. Individuals with solid experience in business have encountered many

problems and challenges throughout the years. This is invaluable in the context of the study

since it helps identify problems, challenges and also recommendations. For this evaluation

criteria, following questions were asked: (1) What is your job title? (2) What do you do and

How long have you worked in this position? And the expected answers were that; the

interviewee works at the R&D organization and is knowledgeable in the problem domain. And

also, is able to provide with proper knowledge and can benefit from the result of the study.

Partnership Maturity. This criterion refers to the existing relationship between the business

and IT departments. Partnership is an essential criterion that ranks high among the enablers

and inhibitors of alignment (Luftman, 2000). How each organization perceives the contribution

of the other, the trust that develops among the participants, and the sharing of risks and rewards

are all major contributors to mature alignment. This partnership should evolve to a point where

IT both enables and drives changes to both business processes and strategies. Naturally, this

requires having a good business design where the CIO and CEO share a clearly defined vision.

For this criterion following questions were used to explore; Is there a clear vision of what the

IT and Business should fulfill? What are the strategies for reaching the target? How do you

work to communicate this target to different stakeholders?

What does this work with goals and strategies look like? The expected answer from these

questions were mainly to explore how well coordinated IT and business are, and is

collaboration well established or not.

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Skills Maturity. This criterion refers to the exploration of maturity of broad skills such (1)

human resource considerations for example how to train/educate, retain and attract, and also

culture. (2) Management style and locus of power meaning the residence of the authority to

make IT decisions, what management style or reporting structure is in place. And also the (3)

competencies and skills required in the organization. For this criterion, following questions

were asked: How is Business Development supported from management? How does this

support work? What roles and functions are active in the work with Business Development?

What skills and competencies are needed? What does broad IT competencies and computer

experience have for effect? How does this mirror itself in the work? Are there any roles or

competencies that you feel you are missing today? The expected answers were; the capability

to attract & retain talent, change readiness of organization, Education of employees, cross

training, to what extent computer experience affects the work and workgroups. To what extent

management is involved and visible in the work and what management structure is in place.

Communication Maturity. This criterion refers to the effectivenes of exchange of ideas and

knowledge sharing between IT and business, enabling both to clearly understand the

organization’s strategies, plans, business and IT environments, risks, priorities, and how to

achieve them. Too often there is little business awareness on the part of IT or little IT

appreciation on the part of the business. Given the dynamic environment in which most

organizations find themselves, ensuring ongoing knowledge sharing across organizations is

paramount.

For this criterion, following questions were asked: Are you actively working to communicate

the work that is conducted within Business Development and IT development? And the

expected answer from this question was: Understanding of IT by business and how knowledge

is shared .

Scope & Architecture Maturity. This set of criteria refers to exploration of IT’s ability to

assume the supporting role to provide a flexible infrastructure that is transparent to all business

partners and customers. How and in what ways IT department works, supports and streamlines

the business through different tools and means. And also, how IT is perceived and viewed by

business units.This criteria describes the extent to which IT is for example able to go beyond

the back office and the front office of the organization; to evaluate and apply emerging

technologies effectively; enable or drive business processes and strategies as a standard;

provide solutions customizable to customer needs.

For this criterion following questions were asked; How do you think the architecture of the

business should be shaped? How does your company use different forms of IT to support and

streamline business development? And the expected answers from them were: Architectural

integration across enterprise or who is the driver /enabler? Business or IT? And what type of

architecture; centralized, decentralized or alike is in place? If there are tools and methods to

streamline the work for business units such as an Enterprise wide architecture or platform.

Challenges. This exploration criteria refers to the challenges observed by professionals.

Working in different organizations with different tasks and responsibilities enfold differently.

Hence, professionals tend normally see challenges near to their daily tasks and observe and

experience challenges differently, therefore an extra criterion with a set of questions attached

to it were designed to explore more about future challenges between IT and Business. For this

reason following questions were asked; What obstacles or difficulties do you see mainly with

the Business Development work in the near future? Are there any future changes that are likely

22

to affect Business Development work in respect to IT development? What challenges do you

experience regarding the IT and Business development in the near future?

As for the evaluation of guidelines, given the time and resources required to realize the results

of such study in practice, a real-life evaluation was not practically possible. Therefore, a

second round of interview have been performed through which an expert review of the

guidelines was performed, the expert was chosen based on their expertise and experience. To

ensure that they have solid knowledge and also to mitigate the potential risk of bias, the profile

was chosen from a business consulting company. Questions and expected answers for

evaluation of guidelines are presented in the Table 3.

Appropriateness. refers to fitness and suitability in terms of relevant knowledge, position and

experience. Individuals with solid experience in business have encountered many problems

and challenges throughout the years. This is invaluable in the context of the study since it helps

identify problems, challenges and also recommendations.

Correctness. means the semantical correctness but also terminlogial also. When proposing

guidelines, it is necessary to ensure that they are both semantically and terminologically

correct. Correctness criterion therefore deals with these elements of correctness and also that

the guidelines are real in the problem domain, herein, business and IT.

Usefulness. means that guideline is useful for the purpose. Sometimes even if the guidelines

are correct there might be issues and implications attached/related to them. Using usefulness

evaluation criterion, the implications, risks and opportunities included were evaluated.

Table 2. Evaluation of the second round of interview

Type of

Criteria

Criteria Questions Expected Answer

Evaluation

Appropriateness

What is your job title?

What do you do and how long have you

worked in this position?

Related knowledge,

expertise and

experience

Exploration

What services/products does your

business offer?

Related to the problem

domain

Evaluation

Correctness What is your opinion about the

recommendations?

Are they real and correct in your

opinion?

The general opinion.

Semantic and

terminological

Correctness.

Reality of the problems and their

importance.

Evaluation

Usefulness

What implications do these

recommendations have for companies?

Risks, opportunities

and Implications

involved with

recommendations

What risks and opportunities are

involved with these recommendations?

Risks and

opportunities included

with the guidance

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3.2.3 Interviews

Case study in theory is an in-depth analysis of a small subset of a population, where instead of

analyzing the entire population and obtaining an average, we take a closer look at a single case

and study it in detail. The case study provides detailed information and creates insight for future

work. But the results of the case study cannot be applied to the larger population.

In the context of this study, however, a case study was not possible due to the spread of Covid-

19 and therefore interviews were conducted at an automotive company and two business

consulting firms in order to gather information and derive conclusions. The data collection is

described further in Section 3.3.

3.2.4 Design and Evaluation

To design guidelines as artifact solution, several interviews and evaluations needed to be

conducted. First, the end-user research has been done at the case organization to gain insights

and discover the active and latent needs and values of the users, and understand the factors of

behavior; what do people think, why they do what they do or do not do what they are supposed

to do, what are their attitudes towards the problem. Thereafter, clear objectives and

restrictions were defined based on the findings in order to gather ideas for the solution. The

viable and feasible ideas for testing were then filtered out using coding of data collected.

Generally, there are several steps to finalize the qualitative content analysis according to

Zhang and Wildemuth (2009), these steps are taken for reviewing the research and

whitepapers:

Step 1. Prepare the Data: This initial step is concerned about the transformation of any media

into written text. This thesis is entirely based on the written media in the relevant context and

therefore does not need to perform any transformation.

Step 2. Define the Units of Analysis: This phase is about the level of categorization. How deep

should the analysis be? What are the guiding principles? How should the process be executed?

These guiding principles are important and should be defined before the actual coding phase

starts. In order to guarantee a consistent and objective analysis of the data.

Step 3. Develop Categories and Coding Scheme: This is the most important part of the research

method which is the basis for step 4. Categories chosen for the guidelines were (1) Definition

and context (2) challenge, (3) recommendation and (4) rationale, these are author’s self-

defined categories:

• Definition and context refers to the meaning and context in which the guideline is

logically find its meaning.

• Challenge refers to the challenge or problem highlighted in the paper/s

• Recommendation refers to the recommendation provided in studied papers, because

not every challenge could be addressed with its equivalent recommendation in the same

paper and as it was the case, many papers pointed out challenges and problems but not

proportionate recommendation with supported motivation were given

• Rationale refers to the motivation in support of recommendation.

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Step 4. Code All the Text: This is the execution of the actual coding of the papers. It is an

ongoing process that is executed on an iterative basis.

Step 5. Assess Your Coding Consistency: Due to human failures it is unavoidable to recheck

the consistency of the coding executed in step 4. Inconsistency usually arrives by later added

categories, spelling mistakes, ambiguous categorization definition, etc.

Step 6. Draw Conclusions from the Coded Data: A really good explanation is given by Zhang

and Wildemuth (2009) who state that “this step involves making sense of the themes or

categories identified, and their properties. At this stage, you will make inferences and present

your reconstructions of meanings derived from the data.”

Step 7. Report Your Message and Findings: This is the final step of the content analysis method

according to Zhang and Wildemuth (2009)

3.2.5 Finalize the Guidelines

In the final phase, the results gathered from the evaluation phases, through expert reviews and

refinement of the solution the chosen ideas have been presented to the end-users to find out the

best solution (do the end-users understand the solution or not). The final result of the study was

compared to the solution with the existing theories, to possibly generalize the outcome and

share the knowledge with appropriate audiences. All in all, in order to get to the best possible

solution that can be generalized, steps have been taken to ensure the design is according to the

steps introduced in Design Science Paradigm.

3.3 Research Methods

An appropriate research method is necessary when conducting a scientific study. This section

describes quantitative and qualitative research, induction and deduction, case study, and then

the applied research methodology used is presented. In this section, methods are described and

motivations for the type of chosen methods are given.

3.3.1 Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Quantitative research involves studying highly structured data, which implies to data that can

be quantified in categories or in numbers. For example, responses from surveys, measurement

values and structured observations from controlled experiments, statistical methods or

deductions. The basis for quantitative research is that there is an objective reality, which is tried

in various ways to obtain information about this reality (Blomkvist, 2014).

Qualitative research is a type of interpretative social science research. The core of a qualitative

research is that researcher tries to find the solution in existing categories, descriptions or

models, in order to find what best describes some phenomenon or context in the real world.

The fact that a method is qualitative means that it is about how to characterize and shape

something. Qualitative research is usually associated with poorly structured data, for example,

open-ended questionnaires, interviews and induction (Blomkvist, 2014).

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3.3.2 Induction and Deduction

Induction means to derive conclusions from empirical experience. The empirical experience

may consist of collected observations, experiments, surveys and more. Conclusions are

analyzed with a bottom-up strategy for better explanation, generalization and understanding

(Trochim, 2006). Deduction, on the contrary, works with a top-down strategy, and derives

conclusions from given premises. That is, the original idea is identified and specified by

analyzing literature or theoretical reports. And then the identified idea can be confirmed by

analysis and testing (Trochim, 2006).

3.3.3 Why Qualitative Research Approach?

Qualitative research approach is used to map out the situation and answer the question and aim

of this thesis. Furthermore, an inductive approach is done through a case study. In the context

of this research, the problem domain was not well investigated before. There are literatures in

the area, however, they touch the problem domain from other perspectives that do not serve

the aims of this study. Therefore, the only option left was to explore the area with experienced

people at the selected organization for the study.

Quantitative research methods as described earlier do not help with the nature of the study in

this research, because of the type of data collected and the validity test required to do so. To be

able to reach a result a literature study had to be made throughout the writing of this work.

Research was made about earlier work related to the thesis goal, symbiosis between Business

and IT.

3.3.4 Sampling Method in this Research

Samples were chosen by snowballing method through which appropriate and resourceful

candidates for the purpose of the study were selected. The sample size’s growth was limited in

the beginning and it grew throughout the study with referrals and suggestions from participants

in the study. Considerable effort has been put into confirming that the roles involved were

chosen in respect to the expertise and experience.

Snowball sampling also known as “chain referral sampling” is also considered a type of

purposive strategy with the difference that the participants help refer the researcher to other

potential participants. This process “snowballs” until the researcher is satisfied with the quality

of the data or until saturation is reached. This practice is common with interviews, as participant

interaction can lead to recommendations for other participants (Biddix, 2018).

3.4 Research Instruments

Besides the scientific material collected from online databases mentioned earlier in Section

3.2.1, semi-structured interviews are conducted as a means for data collection in the process of

the research. The questionnaires used can be found in Appendix A.1. All interviews were voice

recorded and transcribed, the interviewees’ identities were anonymized as well in order to

safeguard the ethical requirements.

26

The preference of the author of this thesis was to conduct face-to-face interviews. However,

the writing of this work coincided with the outbreak of Covid-19 and this type of interviews

was not possible. Therefore, interviews were conducted through telephone and video

conferencing tool called Microsoft Teams.

3.5 Respondents

During the whole research process seven interviewees at different organizations in R&D

department were involved. Every step of the research involved interaction with professionals

working in automotive industry and two business consulting firms. The author of this thesis

interacted directly with those companies, through snowball sampling.

3.6 Validity threats

There are certain tests which are used to establish the quality of an empirical research. These

are internal validity, external validity, dependability, confirmability, and construct validity

(Yin, p. 34). Validity evaluates the strength and correctness of the statement and the relevance

of a research method. This means; whether or not a method used investigates what it intended

to investigate. These tests are mainly accepted within quantitative research studies. Validity of

results in this qualitative research corresponds to the strength and correctness of how the results

mirror the state of the practice in real world. In the context of qualitative research, they should

be judged with the following criteria (Shenton, 2004, pp. 63-75):

• Credibility corresponding to internal validity.

• Transferability corresponding to external validity.

• Reliability corresponding to dependability.

• Objectivity corresponding to confirmability.

Credibility means that “investigators attempt to demonstrate that a true picture of the

phenomenon under scrutiny is being presented.” Transferability ascertain that researcher/s

“provide sufficient detail of the context of the fieldwork for a reader to be able to decide

whether the prevailing environment is similar to another situation with which he or she is

familiar and whether the findings can justifiably be applied to the other setting.” Achieving

dependability criterion is somewhat challenging in qualitative research methods, although

“researchers should at least strive to enable a future investigator to repeat the study.” Finally,

to achieve confirmability, “researchers must take steps to demonstrate that findings emerge

from the data and not their own predispositions” (Shenton, 2004).

3.7 Ethical Requirements

There are three core principles which together make the universally accepted basis for research

ethics; Respect for persons which requires a commitment to ensure the sovereignty of

participants in research, and also obliges the researcher to protect people from exploitation of

their vulnerabilities. The researcher makes sure that the dignity of all participants is respected.

Adherence to these codes of conduct ensures that people will not be used solely as a means to

achieve objectives of the research.

Beneficence requires a commitment to minimize the risks associated with research, including

psychological and social risks, and maximize the benefits for the participants. Researchers must

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articulate specific ways that this will be achieved. In the context of this thesis, the identity of

interviewees is covered to minimize the risks involved for the persons participated in the

research. Justice requires a researcher to commit to ensure that a fair distribution of risks and

benefits results from the research. People who take on the burdens of participation should share

in the benefits of the knowledge gained. Or simply expressed, the people who are expected to

benefit from the knowledge should be the ones who are asked to participate. In this thesis, the

result of the research is presented to the persons participated at a presentation meeting in the

case organization, as a means to assure the justice and benefits for the organization to make

use of.

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4. Literature Review

In order to address the research question, a literature review has been conducted with the aim

of identifying the challenges and recommendations for BITA. In this chapter the results of the

literature study phase are presented. The results mirror the literatures multi perspective point

of view on the problem area. Section 4.1 presents the general overview of the papers; Section

4.2 provides a more detailed review and then Section 4.3 presents preliminary guidelines

extracted from these studies.

4.1 General Overview of Reviewed Papers

In this section a general overview of literature review is presented in Table 3a and Table 3b. to

present different researchers’ and practitioners’ proposals in order to help guide in reading

through the following Section 4.2 with detailed review of these studies.

The categories of models were; Maintenance, Achievement, Assessment, Measurement,

Relationship and Achievement and Maintenance. These categories reveal the theme of studies

through which topic of alignment was studied. These categories refers to the questions such as;

How model X help maintain/achieve/assess/measure alignment? Or What is the relationship

between some established models?

Table 3a. Research papers and proposals

Models Description Maintenance

BITAM A framework for correcting misalignments (Chen et al., 2005)

BITAM-SOA An integrated SOA paradigm and BITA approach, enabling strategic

agile service provisioning and management (Chen 2008)

LEAP A lightweight EA simulation language to examine the BITA through

describing and simulating logical and physical architecture. (Clark et al., 2012)

and (Clark and Barn, 2013)

Achievement

SEAM A set of systemic methods to address business, EA and software development

through service-, value- and company -views (Wegmann et al., 2007)

Situation-

based model

A meta-model to trace different BITA situations (Saat et al., 2010)

SOAGM A model to describe benefits of service-oriented architecture to serve as a

practical framework for BITA in EA design and transformation phase.(Haki

and Forte, 2010)

SAMM An integrated strategic alignment maturity model (SAMM) with

TOGAF 9.1 to design EA step by step (Kurniawan and Suhardi, 2013) BPM-SOA-

EA A framework combining BPM, SOA and EA to address BITA in

different practical patterns (Jensen et al., 2008)

Bimodal IT A Bimodal IT organizational model to address BITA issues for

organizations (Gartner, 2018; Horlach et al., 2016; Horlach et al., 2017) Assessment

SBITA A strategic BITA assessment meta-model based on Luftman’s maturity

assessment method. (Plazaola et al., 2008)

Measurement

BISMAM A medical science model to visualize and measure business and information

systems misalignment. (Carvalho and Sousa, 2008)

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Table 3b. Research papers and proposals

Models Description Relationship BITA-SOA A model which explains the interplay between strategic alignment

dimensions of governance, communication, and architecture enabled by

SOA, and enterprise agility (Abdi and Dominic, 2010) Achievement

and

Maintenance

BPM A Business Proccess Management to achieve and maintain BITA (Malta

and Sousa, 2016)

Methodology

Selection

Framework

A methodology selection framework for choosing a methodology

appropriate to an organization’s needs (Barlow et al., 2011)

EAM-

Bimodal IT

A Bimodal Enterprise Architecture Management function for the new

BizDevOps teams’ deployment (Drews et al., 2017)

BCM A business capability management implementation approach in detail by

following the open group guide, and present necessary activities and

resulting artefacts (Bondel et al., 2018)

AAF A new visionary architecture framework harnessing the agile methods

potentials to satisfy the needs of the digital enterprise (Barbazange et al.,

2018)

Peer-to-Peer

Architecture

The idea of peer-to-peer decision making for EA to increase the

effectiveness of decentralized decision making. (Speckert et al., 2013)

Organization

design

models

Different ways to craft the organizational design. (Gartner, 2018)

Meta-model An integrated meta-model of business model with ArchiMate

(Hinkelmann et al., 2016)

Digital

business

strategy

A framework with four themes defining (1) the scope of digital business

strategy, (2) the scale of digital business strategy, (3) the speed of digital

business strategy, and (4) the sources of business value creation and

capture in digital business strategy. (Bharadwaj et al., 2013)

4.2 Detailed Review

Chen et al. (2005) studied the alignment issue from the perspective of misalignment and argued

that existing alignment models provided little in the way of guidance for actually correcting

misalignment and thus achieving alignment. And then presented a BITA method (BITAM),

introducing a process that describes twelve steps for managing, detecting, and correcting

misalignments.

In another paper by Chen (2008), She proposed integrating the SOA paradigm and Business-

IT alignment approaches enables strategic agile service provisioning and management. And

then a multi-disciplinary process/schematic was combined with SOA (BITAM-SOA) to

achieve a continuous alignment from business to IT and IT to business. The schematic

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presented serves as a process model for service design and management and is rooted in the

resource-based view theory perspective meaning that: business value can be created by IT-

enhanced capabilities that can dynamically integrate resources.

Wegmann et al. (2007) studied also the BITA with EA and then proposed a systemic EA

methodology (SEAM) in order to improve the theoretical foundation, including a service view,

value view, and company view. Wegmann et al. illustrated the method with the use of the

running example of a hiring process in a consulting company. In a study by Wang et al. 2008,

EA is deemed to be the ultimate BITA solution and then a practical method to fulfill EA

developments need is provided.

Plazaola et al. (2008) introduced a strategic BITA assessment meta-model (SBITA) based on

Luftman’s maturity assessment model in order to measure alignment. Carvalho and Sousa

(2008) developed an interesting research “business and information systems misalignment

Mode (BISMAM) combining BITA with medical science using disease as metaphor for

misalignment (Carvalho and Sousa, 2008). The authors were of the opinion that the

misalignments in BITA are close to human diseases. They applied concepts and techniques of

medical science in misalignment to better understand, classify and manage misalignments.

Saat et al. (2010) proposed a meta-model to include four BITA situations, i.e four clusters of

IT/business alignment problems the authors deemed the existing approaches did not distinguish

between; technical quality biased, business demand biased, aligned innovation biased,

compliance biased. However, there are not any presentation of how the identified as-is

situations can be transformed into their corresponding to-be situations. The presented meta

models provide first insights for this and leave this as a future research proposition.

Haki and Forte (2010) modelled a Service Oriented Architecture Governance Model

(SOAGM) to describe the benefits of service-oriented architecture to serve as a practical

framework for BITA in EA design and transformation phase. They came to the conclusion that

the potential benefits that can be realized through SOA outweigh the risks. And suggest further;

in order to effectively leverage the virtualized IT services layer and its collaborative tools, the

organizational model must be transformed to create differentiated and flexible team-based

services. In their view, the new organizational model optimizes cross-business unit operations

to deliver objectives, eliminates costly duplication, and flattens management chains. The

resulting structure is flexible, agile, and well-orchestrated.

In order to combine the top-down and bottom-up analysis (synthetic) of BITA, Clark et al.

(2012) and Clark and Barn (2013) claimed that the latter one (bottom-up) is more precise than

the former. The top-down approach identifies all potentially distinct categories of feature from

the domain with the goal of equipping the user with a diverse collection of elements with which

to express their models. While the bottom-up approach on the other hand identifies a precisely

defined collection of orthogonal concepts with associated semantics; the goal is to achieve

precision with respect to a collection of defined use-cases, as opposed to the more holistic, but

imprecise, top-down approach. Moreover, Clark et al. (2012) developed a Lightweight EA

(LEAP) simulation language to examine the BITA through describing and simulating logical

and physical architecture.

To better utilize EA in BITA, Kurniawan and Suhardi (2013) provided a solution to integrate

a strategic alignment maturity model (SAMM) with TOGAF 9.1. Kurniawan combined meta-

models of BITA and TOGAF. The meta-model technique is intuitionistic to represent different

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layers of EA to coherent business and IT. The guidelines and deliverable in each EA phase

were explained in the paper. In another study, Abdi and Dominic (2010) developed a model

which explains the interplay between strategic alignment dimensions of governance,

communication, and architecture enabled by SOA, and enterprise agility. They argued that in

order to achieve true agility and to meet rapidly changing demands, an enterprise needs an

integrated BITA with SOA.

Malta and Sousa (2016) studied the process-oriented approaches in EA to address BITA. In

another study Jensen et al at IBM. proposed that a long-term and effective transformation can

be assisted by applying SOA principles to BPM and EA in a synergistic fashion (Jensen et al.,

2008). This IBM-published whitepaper explains that in a service-oriented environment the

foundational SOA solution platform provides the IT solution design, BPM provides the

business optimization and a framework for business solution development, and EA provides,

and governs the implementation of, the master plan ensuring synergies across the enterprise

(Jensen et al., 2008).

Horlach et al. (2016) proposed a Bimodal IT organizational model to address BITA and

clarifies this new concept while identifying implications and argues for how it can help address

the alignment issue for organizations. In 2017, Horlach et al. present findings from another

study on the bimodal IT implementation approaches of nine companies. Their study identifies

five different types of bimodal IT in these enterprises, (1) Traditional IT with bimodal

development processes (2) Traditional IT with agile IT outsourcing (3) Bimodal sourcing IT

(4) Bimodal IT (5) Agile IT. Their study shows that specific mechanisms are applied to enhance

BITA in the respective organizational settings of each type.

Barlow et al. (2011) deemed large organizations face challenge in integrating agile practices

with existing standards and business processes. And then proposed a methodology selection

framework for choosing a methodology appropriate to an organization’s needs. Drews et al.

(2017) presented the new concept of BizDevOps in their study “Bimodal Enterprise

Architecture Management: The Emergence of a New EAM Function for a BizDevOps-Based

Fast IT” and discussed how these teams require a faster EA management function. According

to Drews et al. BizDevOps teams are responsible for continuously (re-)defining business

functionality of certain (mico-)services, (re-)developing and running them. In these new fast

IT environments, the role of enterprise architecture management changes dramatically.

BizDevOps teams have a high degree of autonomy in designing both, the functionality and the

architecture of their (micro-)services and thus contribute to business-IT-alignment in a new

way. Nevertheless, a central enterprise architecture management (EAM) function is still

required for supporting the teams regarding cross-team and cross-service issues. Furthermore,

the study proposes that many companies still run the traditional IT function side-by-side with

the new IT function, therefore EAM functions of both parts have to cooperate.

In another case study at a state-controlled organization in Germany, Bondel et al. (2018) argued

for use of EA management tools in order to address BTIA. Bondel et al. (2018) describe phases

of the Business Capability Management (BCM) implementation approach in detail by

following the open group guide, and present necessary activities and resulting artefacts. Bondel

et al. mean that there are only few approaches specifying the creation of business capability

maps and then present a case study describing the initiation of a business capability map at a

medium-sized, state-controlled organization. Based on the case study, the researchers detail

each phase of the approach presenting necessary activities and resulting artefacts. Furthermore,

some major findings and lessons learned are presented. Bondel et al. (2018) suggest that an

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involvement of the whole business leadership leads to a better business-IT alignment, a

common language, and a better understanding between all business units. Furthermore, a

business capability map provides a suitable tool for structuring strategy development.

The Open Group’s whitepaper “Agile Architecture in the Digital Age” by Barbazange et al.

(2018) proposes a new visionary architecture framework harnessing the Agile methods

potentials in order to satisfy the needs of the digital enterprise. The whitepaper argues that “the

effectiveness of agile processes is too often jeopardized because the architecture and

organizational pre-requisites of agility are neglected.” (Barbazange et al., 2018). In another

case study at a higher education organization in Sweden, Speckert et al. (2013) studied the

different aspect of EA’s and how they can support decentralization and then introduced the

idea of peer-to-peer decision making for EA to increase the effectiveness of decentralized

decision making.

In regard to organizational model for analytics, Gartner (2018) highlighted the “divergent trend

of both centralized and decentralized organizational models occurring in parallel” and showed

with evidence from customer reference survey of 921 respondents — that funding programs is

split, with: 37% of programs funded by IT 28% from business unit budgets

35% from a hybrid combination of IT and the business. Gartner then argued that “there is no

‘one size fits all’ model to achieve this ideal Goldilocks-like balance of centralized consistency

and shared best practices along with decentralized agility and domain expertise” (Gartner,

2018). And then analyzed ways for crafting the organizational design.

Bharadwaj et al. (2013) identified four key themes to guide our thinking on digital business

strategy and help provide a framework to define the next generation of insights. The four

themes are (1) the scope of digital business strategy, (2) the scale of digital business strategy,

(3) the speed of digital business strategy, and (4) the sources of business value creation and

capture in digital business strategy.

In the research paper “A new paradigm for the continuous alignment of business and IT:

Combining enterprise architecture modelling and enterprise ontology” Hinkelmann and his

team put forward a new paradigm for next generation enterprise information systems, which

shifts the development approach of model-driven engineering to continuous alignment of

business and IT for the agile enterprise. In this paper, they conclude the study with the

prediction that “future business applications will incorporate business-oriented graphical

modelling tools that enable rapid, code-free modifications to business applications, including

process orchestration, business rules, notification, organizational structures, embedded

business intelligence, and even the assembly of new functionality from existing functional

elements.”

4.3 Guidelines from Literature Review

In this section challenges and recommendations highlighted in studied papers are presented,

it is noteworthy to mention that not all of these papers proposed recommendations to answer

the research question, guidelines below are extracted using text analysis and coding described

in Section 3.2.4.

Guideline 1: Create or Choose between an EA framework and adapt it to fulfill the

enterprise strategy needs and organize an EA team with a head architect

34

• Definition and Context: EA is a comprehensive framework used to manage and align

an organization's IT assets, people, operations, and projects with its operational

characteristics (Pereira and Sousa, 2005). Within the context of strategic planning for

digital transformation which often goes beyond funding, hurman resource management

methods and processes, the technology roadmaps are demanded in adopting the

technologies that make transformation possible. If an organization does not effectively

and comprehensively address technology needs, it could put the brakes on projects and

even on the entire transformation effort. In this regard, enterprise architects do the

modeling that is needed to change the operating model, map business capabilities, and

align technology to the strategic goals of the organization. For example, if the goal is

to provide faster, broader and less costly access to business applications for users, the

architect might recommend a move to the open source cloud infrastructure. If a

company wants to make applications easier to understand, develop, test, and release,

the architect might suggest the use of microservices.

• Challenge: How to identify and correct misalignment and find out solutions to achieve

alignment level (Wang et al., 2008).

• Recommendation: Choose a suitable EA framework, adapt it to fulfill the enterprise

strategy needs, and organize an EA team leaded by an enterprise architect (Wang et al.,

2008).

• Rationale: The EA defines how information and technology will support the business

operations and provide benefits for the business. Using EA properly, enterprises can

get their business benefits and improve their innovation competency (Wang et al.,

2008). EA makes it possible to describe the As-Is state and then elaborates the desired

architecture called To-Be state, then represents the migration plan for transition from

the As-Is architecture to desired To-Be architecture for the enterprise

Guideline 2: Organize EITHER by (1) a Bimodal IT organization with dual mode IT, one

responsible for stability, security and reliability of core infrastructure and one agile IT

with speed, innovation and customer in focus OR (2) Merging IT resources to Business

and Shift the responsibility of IT systems to the Business units

• Definition and Context: Bimodal IT or two-speed IT is the practice of managing two

separate but coherent styles of work: one focused on predictability; the other on

exploration. Mode 1 is optimized for areas that are more predictable and well-

understood. It focuses on exploiting what is known, while renovating the legacy

environment into a state that is fit for a digital world. Mode 2 is exploratory,

experimenting to solve new problems and optimized for areas of uncertainty. These

initiatives often begin with a hypothesis that is tested and adapted during a process

involving short iterations, potentially adopting a minimum viable product (MVP)

approach. Both modes are essential to create substantial value and drive significant

organizational change, and neither is static. Marrying a more predictable evolution of

products and technologies (Mode 1) with the new and innovative (Mode 2) is the

essence of an enterprise bimodal capability. Both play an essential role in digital

transformation.(Gartner Glossary, 2020)

• Challenge: (1) Overly centralized teams cannot deliver the domain expertise and

responsiveness that business units require. (Gartner, 2018). (2) Digitalization or digital

transformation introduces new challenges for companies, which engenders the need for

a faster IT or a shift in responsibilities for IT systems to the business units. (Horlach et

al., 2016; Drews et al., 2017)

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• Recommendation: In order to address the need for faster IT or shift in responsibilities

for IT systems to the business units, organize a Bimodal IT organization with two-speed

IT where traditional IT is responsible for stability, security and reliability of core

infrastructure and Agile/Digital IT with agility, speed, innovation and customer in

focus. (Horlach et al., 2016, Drews et al.2017)

• Rationale: Several studies present the concept of “Bimodal IT” which is a recent topic

in theory and practice. The term was first made public by the advisory firm Gartner in

its CIO agenda for 2014 “Taming the digital dragon: CIO agenda 2014” and is

considered as a concept that allows to narrow down of the gap between IT and business.

In this organization setting, the IT organization is considered as a “two-speed IT” or

“Bimodal IT”. The traditional/classic IT (slow) is responsible for stability, security and

reliability of large core infrastructure and digital IT (fast) with agility, speed, innovation

and customer in focus and works close to the business units. However, both parts

operate with different organizational structures and methods, hence the need for

different governance mechanisms, processes and organizational structures to respond

to this duopoly of speed or bimodality, according to Horlach et al. (Horlach et al., 2016;

Drews et al., 2017).

Guideline 3: Empower each local department with a cross-functional team that blends

data engineering, data science and domain expertise and then communicate jurisdiction

by clarifying when decentralized teams are able to create prototypes, pilots or full-

production solutions

• Definition and Context: The balance of power vary for each department. Some

departments do not have the skills to build analytic prototypes or support their

production applications. These departments will require much more handholding from

the centralized teams. Other departments could build prototypes and be able to promote

that content out to a broader pilot used across the department. And finally, there will be

some mature departments that are fully capable of building or supporting production

analytic applications.

• Challenge: Overly decentralized teams are able to deliver plenty of domain expertise,

agility and responsiveness, but struggles to deliver consistency across its information

sources and models. In addition, this approach struggles to share best practices (Gartner,

2018).

• Recommendation: Empower each local department with a cross-functional team that

blends data engineering, data science and domain expertise and then communicate

jurisdiction by clarifying when decentralized teams are able to create prototypes, pilots

or full-production solutions. (Gartner, 2018)

• Rationale: According to Gartner (2018) the knowledge gap in either domain of

business or IT creates this challenge for organizations. Gartner (2018) argues that “It is

virtually impossible to find one person with the necessary skills in all three required

areas: (1) IT skills to write code and integrate the data (2) Data science for the

quantitative skills to crunch the numbers (3) Domain expertise for someone who

understands the business process”

Guideline 4: Integrate Heavyweight and Lightweight IT by loosely-coupled technology,

standardization and organization

• Definition and Context: Heavyweight IT is the traditional systems and databases,

which are becoming more sophisticated and expensive through advanced integration.

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Lightweight IT is the new paradigm of mobile apps, sensors and bring-your-own-

device, also called consumerization or Internet-of Things.

• Challenge: In a study done by Bygstad (2015) in Norwegian health sector, two current

trends are highlighted (1) there is an on-going effort to integrate IT silo systems into

seamless solutions, by various technologies such as service-oriented architecture and

cloud computing. (2) the increasing use of privately-owned units, such as smartphones

and tablets, in work life has challenged hegemony of the IT departments (Bring-Your-

Own-Device trend).

• Recommendation: “Heavyweight” and “lightweight” IT should be only loosely

integrated, both in terms of technology, standardization and organization (Bygstad,

2015).

• Rationale: According to Bygstad (2015) there are two current trends changing the IT

industry and the ways we develop IT solutions; a heavyweight and a lightweight IT.

The key aspect of lightweight IT is not only the cheap and available technology as such,

but the fact that its deployment is frequently done by users or vendors, bypassing the

IT departments. Bygstad investigated four cases in Norwegian health sector and his

findings show that (1) generativity enfolds differently in heavyweight and lightweight

IT and (2) generativity in digital infrastructures is supported by the interaction of

loosely coupled heavyweight and lightweight IT. The practical design implication is

that heavyweight and lightweight IT should be only loosely integrated, both in terms of

technology, standardization and organization. Generativity in this regard refers to a

self-contained system from which its user draws an independent ability to create

generate, or produce new content unique to that system without additional help or input

from the system's original creators.

Guideline 5: Rethink the role of IT strategy from that of a functional-level strategy-

aligned but essentially always subordinate to business strategy to one that reflects a

fusion between IT strategy and Business strategy.

• Definition and Context: Exponential advancements in the price/performance

capability of computing, storage, bandwidth, and software applications are driving the

next generation of digital technologies to be delivered through cloud computing. Digital

business strategy is simply that of organizational strategy formulated and executed by

leveraging digital resources to create differential value. This definition highlights ( 1 )

going beyond the traditional view, thinking of IT strategy as a function within firms

and recognizing the pervasiveness of digital resources in other functional areas such as

operations, purchasing, supply chain, and marketing; (2) going beyond systems and

technologies, which might have narrowed the traditional views of IT strategy to

recognize digital resources, thereby being in line with the resource-based view of

strategy (3) explicitly linking digital business strategy to creating differential business

value, thereby elevating the performance implications of IT strategy beyond efficiency

and productivity metrics to those that drive competitive advantage and strategic

differentiation.

• Challenge: The prevailing view of information technology strategy as a functional-

level strategy that must be aligned with the firm's chosen business strategy (Bharadwaj

et al., 2013)

• Recommendation: Rethink the role of IT strategy, from that of a functional-level

strategy-aligned but essentially always subordinate to business strategy to one that

reflects a fusion between IT strategy and business strategy. This fusion is termed digital

business strategy by Bharadwaj et al. (2013).

37

• Rationale: The business infrastructure has become digital with increased

interconnections among products, processes, and services. Across many firms spanning

different industries and sectors, digital technologies (viewed as combinations of

information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies) are

fundamentally transforming business strategies, business processes, firm capabilities,

products and services, and key interfirm relationships in extended business networks.

Guideline 6: Formulate formal semantics of the models for applications in order to

support human user in adapting to the models and also to automate the modification

and adaption of applications

• Definition and Context: Formal semantics of the models expresses and coherents the

semantics of all modelling concepts. Modelling is a human task, it typically starts with

graphical models, which are cognitively more adequate than formal methods for most

stakeholders. The graphical models are used as a means for communication between

the stakeholders involved in enterprise design. In this context formal semantics is

opprtune to facilitate the adaptation of models.

• Challenge: It is a future long-term challenge to involve business people not only in the

adaptation of enterprise architecture but also into the implementation and adaptation of

enterprise information systems (Hinkelmann et al., 2016)

• Recommendation: To automate the modification and adaption of applications – or at

least to support the human user in adapting the current models – formulate formal

semantics of the models (Hinkelmann et al., 2016).

• Rationale: “Evolving application flexibility via embedded modelling tools has been

identified in a recent study as one of the 10 most important technology trends in

business application architecture”, according to Hinkelmann et al. (2016). In the

research paper “A new paradigm for the continuous alignment of business and IT:

Combining enterprise architecture modelling and enterprise ontology” Hinkelmann and

his team put forward a new paradigm for next generation enterprise information

systems, which shifts the development approach of model-driven engineering to

continuous alignment of business and IT for the agile enterprise. In this paper, they

conclude the study with the prediction that “future business applications will

incorporate business-oriented graphical modelling tools that enable rapid, code-free

modifications to business applications, including process orchestration, business rules,

notification, organizational structures, embedded business intelligence, and even the

assembly of new functionality from existing functional elements.”

Guideline 7: Use peer-to-peer decision making if decentralization is the desired

organization model

• Definition and Context: Peer-to-peer is a relevant concept to decentralization in EA

for two reasons, according to Speckert et al (2013). First, individuals in highly

decentralized organization are able to contribute to the enterprise in a manner that is

completely up to them, similar to peers in a peer-to-peer system, where the peers

participate in a completely voluntary manner. Second, the challenge that peer-to-peer

systems overcome is similar to the main challenge faced by decentralized

organizations: “to figure out a mechanism and architecture for organizing the peers in

such a way so that they can cooperate to provide a useful service to the community of

users” . This is similar to the main challenge facing decentralized organizations - lack

of cooperation.

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• Challenge: The existing EA frameworks of Zachman, FEA, TOGAF do not support

decentralization (Speckert et al., 2013). Because of the issue of non-fit between

emerging decentralized organizational environments and established EA

methodologies.

• Recommendation: In order to support decentralized decision making, make use of

peer-to-peer decision making (Speckert et al., 2013).

• Rationale: In a case study at a higher education organization in Sweden, Speckert et

al. (2013) studied the different aspect of EA’s and how they can support

decentralization. Speckert introduced the idea of peer-to-peer architecture for EA to

increase the effectiveness of decentralized decision making. While in classical EA

approaches typically a centralized architecture board oversees architectural decisions,

a peer-to-peer review could be used to decentralize better and speed-up decision

making. The combination of domain-driven-design and peer-to-peer validation of

architectural decisions present an opportunity to leverage decentral competence from a

methodological point of view. Speckert et al. deems that having decision making on the

operational level allows for quick decisions that enables an organization to take

advantage of opportunities quickly (Speckert et al., 2013).

Guideline 8: Empower teams in local decision making by pushing the jurisdiction down

• Definition and Context: Empowerment of agile teams is the ability to make

independent decisions within team based on the intuition and judgment of the experts

and team members. In an agile organization top management provide clear vision,

priorities, and missions. Transparency gives a team access to the information and

context it needs to make good decisions. Well-informed teams are given empowerment

and trust. Access to privileged information is no longer a power source that middle

managers leverage to impose their will upon their teams. (Barbazange et al., 2018)

• Challenge: Command-and-control decision making in traditional organizations’

management gets in the way of autonomy in agile organization (Barbazange et al.,

2018)

• Recommendation: In order to empower the agile teams, jurisdiction should be pushed

down to the teams (Thummadi et al., 2017; Barbazange et al., 2018).

• Rationale: When a top to bottom authority approach is selected, management is at risk

of making unrealistic decisions. Insights into real problems and opportunities become

obscured by simplification and abstraction of information. Similarly when bottom-up

communication is reduced to one-line messages and “green/yellow/red” progress

reports, it reduces the number of interactions creating even more distance between those

“in command” and employees. According to Barbazange et al. (2018), transparency

and information accessibility enables teams to make good decisions without the need

to wait for decision points or alike. Barbazange et al. deem this as means of support for

agility thus empowering the teams and creating the culture of trust, and that information

will no longer be a power source for middle managers to impose their will on teams.

Guideline 9: Embrace and accept the changing roles and responsibilities in agile

transformation

• Definition and Context: In an agile organization, roles and responsibilities evolve

through self-organization and new responsibilities and roles arise. For example, roles

such as project manager shifts toward an agile coach or Scrum master and line managers

focus on capability building. Significant degrees of freedom gained through self-

39

organization makes it possible to embed team members across different levels (from

portfolio to feature teams) of the organization to increase communication about

requirements and dependencies for actors to modify their roles and responsibilities.

• Challenge: There is ambiguity in roles and responsibilities in agile organization

(Barbazange et al., 2018; Thummadi et al., 2017)

• Recommendation: Roles need to evolve to remain relevant in an organization that

adopts agile ways of working (Barbazange et al., 2018)

• Rationale: Barbazange do not provide with much reasoning, however, in another study

by Thummadi et al. (2017), who studied the agile enterprise architecture at a railroad

company in US, define ambiguous roles and responsibilities as the uncertainty factor

in actors’ or employees’ functions and routines that needs to be carried out. He

mentions further “As the case organization was new to scaled agile, allocation of

resources was rather challenging. For example, the role of Project Manager was

gradually consumed by the roles and responsibilities of Release Transportation

Engineer (RTE) and Scrum Master, and the actors were slowly adjusting and sinking

into new roles by taking up new responsibilities that cut across the roles of managers

and enterprise architects.” Thummadi et al. also highlight the self-organizing which can

reshape the roles of manager, who is traditionally known to control the pace and

trajectory of the software development activities.

Guideline 10:

• If the organizations reciprocal interdependencies are high and size of

project teams are large, adopt a hybrid methodology.

• If the project team size is small, adopt an agile methodology.

• If project interdependencies are sequential, regardless of team size or

project volatility, the project manager should adopt a plan-driven

methodology and invest in technologies that will support the project

planning process.

• Definition and Context: There are three types of interdependencies and three types of

coordination used to manage those interdependencies according to Barlow et al. (2011).

The types of interdependencies present in an organization and the costs of

interdependency coordination can to some extent determine the appropriate

methodology. Plan-driven methodologies assume that project interdependencies are

mostly sequential and that they can be managed through coordination in the form of

planning and review. While many interdependencies in a project life cycle are actually

reciprocal or mutual in nature. And as a result, some of the time and cost spent on the

creation of detailed plans is wasted and a certain degree of mutual adjustment is

required. Comparatively, agile methodologies assume the opposite. They consider most

of project interdependencies as reciprocal and, therefore, adopt mutual adjustment to

coordinate all interdependencies. In other words, they de-emphasize formal, upfront

planning and coordinate ad hoc as the needs arise, however, mutual adjustment rather

than planning for sequential interdependencies is also a waste. Ideally, project teams

would adopt methodologies using a hybrid coordination strategy that uses mutual

adjustment only for reciprocal interdependencies and planning for sequential

interdependencies.

• Challenge: Large organizations face challenges in integrating agile practices with

existing standards and business processes. (Barlow et al., 2011)

40

• Recommendation: Depending on level of volatility, meaning the instability associated

with turnover in the project team, and level of reciprocal interdependencies and team

sizes organizations should adopt a proper methodology between (1) a hybrid

methodology, (2) an agile methodology or (3) a plan-driven methodology (Barlow et

al. 2011)

• Rationale: Because neither a purely agile methodology nor a waterfall methodology is

suited for general use at a large, mature organization, it is recommend, where

appropriate, the implementation of a traditional-agile hybrid solution that will enable

project teams to take advantage of the organization’s maturity … while gaining

advantages of agile development such as adaptability to changing requirements. A

hybrid methodology requires managers to decompose project tasks into modules that

are as independent as possible. Once the project is modularized, the manager can use

plan-driven techniques for any project modules that have mostly sequential

interdependencies, and agile techniques for the majority of modules that have reciprocal

interdependencies. If such projects can be successfully modularized, project managers

can use plan-driven techniques to coordinate the actions of sub-teams. (Barlow et al.,

2011) Agile methods, also with iterative cycles and frequent communication among

team members and stakeholders, are well-suited to small teams with highly reciprocal

interdependencies.

41

5. Result of Interviews

In this chapter the results of the interviews are presented. The results presented are from the

first round of interviews and they follow the application of the design science approach chosen

for this thesis work. In Section 5.1 result of the first round of interviews are presented. And

then in Section 5.2 challenges and recommendations extracted are summarized and presented.

5.1 Result of The First Round of Interviews

In order to gain insight and explicate the problem, as suggested by Design Science Paradigm,

interviews at a case organization was conducted. Analysis of interviews was based on recorded

sounds’ translation from Swedish to English and then transcription and confirmation;

organization of statements by common meanings; synthesis of views and positions; and

participant review of the findings.

A brief description of each respondent and the organization they are or have been operating

within the framework of the interview is described first and then results of other exploration

criteria are followed in the same order as described in Section 3.2.2.

Appropriateness of Respondents

Six professionals from different parts of R&D department at the case study company were

chosen in the process of this study as shown in the Table 4. The selection and appropriateness

of their profiles were through expert supervision and snowball sampling. Snowball sampling

means that the interviewees recommended other candidates who could contribute with valuable

knowledge and also benefit from the result of the study.

Regarding the appropriateness one can include that the almost all of the interviewees had

experience and solid knowledge in the problem area. The full answers from the interviews are

not provided in this report, because of confidentiality and length of interview transcripts, but

can be found in a separate document that can be provided through contact with the author.

Partnership Maturity

“Business and IT do not share a clear vision of collaboration”, according to Interviewee 5. He

adds that “There is a lack of continuous dialogue with the central IT department.” And also

that “things are getting better and more and more people have begun to realize that there is

Table 4: Presentation of respondents

Code Role Experience

Interviewee 1 Senior Technical Advisor 20+ years

Interviewee 2 Head of Digital Office at R&D 21 years

Interviewee 3 Section Manager, Process Methods and IT development 3 years

Interviewee 4 Senior Business Consultant, digitalization 15 years

Interviewee 5 Business Architect Product Data 11 years

Interviewee 6 Business Architect 17 years

Interviewee 7 Senior Consultant and Partner at business consulting

company

30+ years

42

too much improvement work to be done that a central IT organization will never be able to

provide support for. Because there is always a big overhead for IT.”

Regarding the strategy and employees’ awareness of these, there were discrepancy in answers,

However, the overall picture given by interviewees shows that the strategies are well defined

by the top management, but because of the prioritization of daily work activities they are not

so tangible in the work since they mirror yearly goals or 5 years or even 10 years visions and

strategies.

According to Interviewee 4, “One can say like this that there are visions and then we do status

analysis to know where we are today. For example, we see a gap and that the work and targets

are not connected, then we try to describe how our go-to-market should look like. Should we

have seminars or invite middle managers or … there are visions and then these strategies

should always get improved continuously … generally the financing should be solved first, and

then prioritization issue should be solved, so there are some points that should be done before

we try to reach these goals.”

Interviewee 3 and 5 were of the opinion that the IT support is not so standard at the moment.

And “that IT is regarded as a central resource that must be prioritized and the fact that they

work on a waterfall model. This has led to a lot of completely uncoordinated development work

being done in the groups. so, we need some form of collaborative approach, where we inform

each other and do not block each other and share knowledge of methods and architectures.”,

according to interviewee 5. According to Interviewee 2“One should also change the way we

work with IT and this view of working with IT department and distressed IT internal

debiting/charging methodology that is in place today.”

Skills Maturity

Majority of the interviewees were of the opinion that the support from the top management is

good. Top management have a clear vision of what should be done and often know the benefits

of things that are to be done. And there is good communication in place, however the different

layers of management and sometimes their disconnect has resulted in different prioritizations

and shaped different image of what should be done and prioritized. And also majority of

interviewees expressed that it is business that decides when it comes to budgetary of IT

developments.

Regarding the roles and competencies, the experience of the employees at the company is that

the User Experience, Design Thinking roles are needed in near contact with business units.

Interviewee 2 suggests that “I think that we should have more developer competencies of IT

solutions inside R&D groups. I think we need local IT competencies in groups who have good

insight in the central part of IT development. Most of these roles are here and there in the

company but they are not positioned as they should be”

Interviewee 3 adds furthermore to this and says that “Typically, It takes someone who knows

well what kind of business we need to pursue and support, then someone that can handle the

central requirement management, and then there is need for someone who is able to lead and

manage a ‘change manager or leader’, regardless if this is about educating people in a certain

new application or process. And maybe someone who is skilled to build and develop IT

solutions and finally an architect who can pinpoint and map these solutions to the bigger

43

picture so that it can be integrated into a whole. So that we can have an effective information

flow and that there are not many information silos in the future.”

Regarding the broad skills in the future, all interviewees have been of the opinion that having

broad IT skills help a lot, for example “if you have knowledge in developing apps then you can

apply it in your work and enjoy the benefits, or you can help your colleagues in their work.”

According to Interviewee 5 but sometimes you do not get to do that because of command and

control and other security measures, according to Interviewee 2 and he adds furthermore that

“you should get to do it.”

Interviewee 2 highlights that “We have huge amount of information about customer and market

behavior, which is highly unstructured, and this makes it difficult to perform data analysis on.

In the near future we expect to be able to make use of the customer and market data that we

can use in an effective way by 2025, but there are many manual processes and this work does

not happen by itself.” By 2030, the company strives to launch new products as many as half of

its product portfolio, a large portion of which are thought to be electrical and autonomous.

However, “the maturity of technology in autonomous vehicles are pretty low which is

interesting if we are going to build them in the near future.”.

Another challenge which is highlighted is according to Interviewee 2 “One challenge is that

IT development and IT competencies are evolving in a very fast pace than ever before. And big

companies like us want to control over how the IT solutions and digitalization is going to be

performed. And this is something against what Gartner talks about in regard to

Democratization trend for example.( Democratization of technology means providing people

with easy access to technical or business expertise without extensive and costly training.

(Gartner, 2020)) So, just this wave of possibilities and opportunities that are upon us and the

slow way that big companies like us adjust/assimilate in combination with information security

measures makes this very big challenge for us. This slow adjustment introduces other problems

for company as well. For example, the employees may feel that these changes happen too

slowly so that they could appreciate it, and this may make people feel unhappy at their jobs

and not want to come to work for us for example. At the same time if we let go of thinking about

this problem, the information security would face serious issues if this is not addressed.”

Communication Maturity

Majority of the interviewees were of the opinion that communication and exchange of ideas

and knowledge sharing between IT and Business are not working well with each other, and

that there is potential for developing the communication. Another issue extracted from the

interviews is the tediousness in the way of working due to manual processes. For example, if a

user wants to order a test equipment, she/he should take data manually from one system and

document in Excel and transfer to another system. And this introduces tediousness in the work.

Or that data is not available until a certain point in time for example a decision point or alike.

Interviewee 2 and 6 had similar opinion about manual processes and that these manual

processes are causes of information siloes where for example Interviewee 2 expressed “In

regard to Partnering strategy (...we have at Scania) we need and should exchange data and

cooperate with our external partners such as our suppliers and group partners Volkswagen,

MAN and Traton group. We need to use their ideas as well and some of them for example need

to automatically have accessibility to our information. Today this happens extremely

manually” and Interviewee 6 added “We have also realized that after all, information do not

44

flows because often the information is kept in an IT support or tool as an information silo, it

can also be an enterprise platform.”

Scope & Architecture Maturity

The IT department is seen as a limited resource in the organization and the general opinion

among almost every interviewee is that “it is easier to see the costs of IT than what it

contributes and delivers.”, according to Interviewee 3. However, there are other views about

IT not being able to deliver the domain expertise of the business and be continuously responsive

to changing requirements along the way. IV4 whose job is mainly in bringing the two worlds

of business and IT together says that “The level of ‘new’ IT is so high that it more or less

requires process/domain competence to realize the intended value (AI, Data Science,

Automation, etc.)”.

Agile methods suggest working with unspecified requirements and that the solutions are

continuously developed, business units want to be able to meet their needs as they develop

operations in business. And according to Interviewee 1, “The centralized IT teams, despite

doing a good job of creating consistency, control and sharing best practices, often create a

bottleneck for other teams, who are waiting too long to get their requirements met”.

Interviewee 1 tells also that “In my opinion we have too many translations of requirements and

there is there that pitfalls for our IT systems development are, what you have forgotten to put

on the requirement list is long gone because of the way IT works which is not good if we are

going to work agile, Agile methods say; make sure that the customer participates in

demonstrations so that you have understood the assignment, evaluate, validate and deliver on

the way until you have the finished product”

Interviewee 3 is of the opinion that “… there are maybe many architects that have different

opinions of how the city and buildings should look like, but there are not many who really work

to make it happen and build it. A ‘city plan’ for our organization is very much appreciated and

needed so that we can have a good overview of our information, there I think we are weak

today.”

“I think that we need some kind of visualization, a city plan for the whole information

environment or whatever you call it. So that we, at least, do not build two swimming pools at

each side of the municipality border for example.” according to Interviewee 3. Interviewee 6

were of the opinion that there is a need for a central ownership of architecture by saying “We

at YM felt that we had a lot of different models in our work but when we talked to each other,

we had a hard time understanding each other because everyone was talking in their own model.

We felt that we needed this so called ‘Sweden map’ to be able to understand each other, a map

where we could hang our other models at a lower level.”.

Interviewee 6 added furthermore that “my reflection is that we need to become more mature

when it comes to working with architecture when I started almost 5 years ago, I was surprised

at how immature the work with architecture was. You were often asked the question, and many

did not understand what it was. Many people did not understand why we should work with

architecture, I have seen the shift during these 5 years to where we are today, so many people

talk about architecture, many problems that are raised can be linked to the fact that we have

not worked with architecture, we lack central support that holds the architecture of Scania

together. I miss a TOP-DOWN think in the architectural work at Scania…I would have liked

the architecture work to be more proactive. And that it was involved in the strategy work at

45

Scania at an early stage. Based on set goals and strategy, we could decide which projects we

need to pursue to get there, what business development or what business change we need to

achieve the desired architecture. It should be central: To work with architecture on an overall

level.”

Interviewee 6 summarized his opinions by expressing the need for a whole vision “In many

situations you would like to work with architecture at a height where you could see the whole

and be able to control so that you worked in the same way in architecture on production, R&D,

purchasing, and other parts of the company.”

Regarding the architecture Interviewee 2 also agreed with the majority of other interviewees

and said that “I would say that there should be a business architecture so that you can better

improve and optimize your work environment as much as you need by yourself with the digital

tools that are available. Then there is the need that all of Scania adjust to this new type of

business architecture. I would say a little less central IT department and bigger business

departments.”

Challenges

Regarding the challenges in the near future experienced by employees are for the first the

spread of “Covid-19 at the time being… it is only the must-do works that are prioritized and

many employees are laid off so only important jobs are in the schedule. This includes only the

product development and production of buses, trucks and engines. So, in a near future this

economic situation the challenge for now as I see it.” According to Interviewee 3. Another

view in this regard is Interviewee 2’s point of view “I see the biggest issue to be the separation

of IT and other business units in Scania.”. And Interviewee 3 also supports this by arguing “It

is not possible to separate and say the IT support and tool development are in that part of

organization and other business development is in other parts of organization, it should be

integrated. Possibly that you define what is local business development which can include

processes and methods and IT tools, and what are central or common process, method and IT

tools. It should not be binary and just because of it is about IT tools there are separations in

organization, local vs centralized.”

5.2 Guidelines Resulting from Interviews

In summary, challenges and recommendations were extracted using content analysis of the

interview transcriptions. It is noteworthy to mention that not all of these challenges have the

proper recommendations, therefore only those included or that could be mapped to the

respective challenges were put forward in the guidelines.

Guideline 11: Do not consider IT as a “cost center”, IT and Business should collaborate

and be integrated.

• Definition and context: Considering IT as a cost by business means that IT functions

as a business inside a business and this results in an organization being in the center of

attention and order taking from many groups which leads to bottlenecks and

unresponsiveness. The collaboration between IT and Business is crucial to the

efficiency of proposed solutions by either part. This collaboration should evolve to a

point of partnership where IT both enables and drives changes to both business

processes and strategies which are often long term. A central IT organization usually

provide consistency and stability through operational responsibility they bear to ensure

46

that there is documentation and courses available. Furthermore, IT department provides

maintenance of solutions for a certain period of time and take care of when these

solutions should be replaced, and also ensure that there is the opportunity for help and

support. • Challenge: IT is considered as a scarce resource or a cost center by business units. This

view leads to unintended behaviors in business side and solutions that risk becoming

product critical or non-functional on a broader arena. Interviewee 3 was of the opinion

that “the challenge is to find the next setup about how we internally handle this IT

debiting system with the related costs and its follow up. This issue drives a weird

behavior around this system. The arrangement which is in place today is that Business

is charged with the IT work that is ordered. Which shows a clear cost, but value of this

ordered work might be delivered somewhere else...and after all It is people’s time that

gets neglected by this type of internal debiting/charging system”

• Recommendation: Step in and coordinate your work with other groups so that you

work toward a common vision and establish a standard way of collaboration with IT

department. Decide upon a common channel of dialogue with IT department in order

to collaborate and coordinate work on a continuous basis. IT should not work as a

business inside a business. • Rationale: Many issues can be avoided through coordinated collaboration between IT

department and other sections and units. Today this is done through hierarchical

upwards reporting so these nodes are not actually working together but the need is felt

that they should actually come closer and collaborate, according to 5. And also, “by

balancing resources business units can have designers and coordinators who can

develop tools, if we find a well-functioning way of working with principles on how the

business can develop IT support in conjunction with the central IT organization. This

way they provide training and courses in these guidelines so that we can bridge with

IT professional developers who can take care of the long-term and handling and

documentation and integrations and things that you cannot do at local operations.”

Guideline 12: Roles and competencies such as User Experience, IT developer, Design

Thinking, Business Architect are needed and should reside in business units.

• Definition and context: There are competent business people and there are IT

developers with good insight of the central part of IT development but some roles such

as user experience, design thinking, IT developer, business architect are placed in IT

department, but their job is very much needed in the business sections as well. • Challenge: Business does not have IT competencies and skills and IT also lacks the

competency of business. Ambiguity in role definitions and responsibilities, and

competencies that are placed in wrong place or there they should not. • Recommendation: “There are competent business people and there are competent IT

developers with good insight of the central part of IT development but some of these

roles such as user experience, design thinking, IT developer, business architect are

placed in IT department, but their job is very much needed in the business section as

well.” • Rationale: When business units are equiped with competencies they are in need to

improve the work and possibly get to launch pilot projects then they can better put ideas

to work and lead these ideas to production ready solutions or alike. According to

interviewee 2 and 5 IT development and Business development should and can get

closer to each other through balance of resources, recruitment or other initiatives. This

way IT development is close to the user. Preferably that the IT competencies reside in

47

every individual. So, if someone needs support there is someone in the group that can

help or gladly more people. And according to interviewee 3 “Typically, It takes

someone who knows well what kind of business we need to pursue and support, then

someone that can handle the central requirement management, then there is need for

someone who is able to lead and manage “change manager”, regardless if this is about

educating people in a certain new application or process. And maybe someone who is

skilled to build and develop IT solutions and finally an architect who can pinpoint and

map these solutions to the bigger picture so that it can be integrated into a whole. So

that we can have an effective information flow and that there are not many information

silos in the future.”

Guideline 13: Avoid saving data in applications as much as possible through verification

communicated by digital platforms available promoting the formal principles and

guidelines for reliability and safety. Applications should be in their status quo and not

save information in them.

• Definition and context: Data and information silos are applications, tools, EA models

and alike that store data in them. These data and information as well as the tools

themselves can be kept in silos which often introduce manual processes, tediousness

and hinder in the way information flows and is communicated to other groups, sections

or departments. Silos severely restrict the exchange of information because information

flows within the silo but is not shared with others. An example of this introducing

problem is for example R&D selectively shares information with marketing team, the

marketing team will make decisions based on the limited information it receives, which

might not be accurate. For example, the marketing division might plan a major push for

an existing product because it is unaware that R&D plans to release a new version in

six months. Another example can be duplicated training and education of employees

when different units of the organization are not aware of each other’s work due to

information silos. On a broader arena, when information is not shared, leaders might

make decisions based on assumed or faulty information which can be a huge cost for a

company. The result of shared data can be consumed to provide better overview through

visualization called heatmaps for projects, programs and portfolios. For example when

different projects require employees to get certified in a specific tool or method then

this can easily help provide with one training for many projects and hence reduction in

costs compared to otherwise.

• Challenge: Information flow is exhausted by silos and this unavailability of

information means cost for business as a whole. Poor information distribution can result

in poor analysis. • Recommendation: Make use of platforms that communicate the guidelines and

principles so that you verify the tools that you develop and do not build your own data

warehouse in the business (Interviewee 5). And also it is important to have information

groups and that these are just in one place, and not in many different applications,

promote use of information groups; customer information in one place, product

informantion in other, customer order in another one and so on.

• Rationale: Communicationg guidelines and principles for application developments

minimizes the risk of creating information silos and unintended and bad outcomes.

When information is kept in silos, decisions cannot be made to the best intrest of the

company.

48

Guideline 14: In order to create a common language and communication method, there

needs to be a global “city plan” or digital map/architecture, with central ownership at IT

department, of the whole enterprise so that we can understand each other better, and we

can have our local maps that work beneath this global map.

• Definition and context: Having a visualization of the whole enterprise would mean

that a common language and communication method is established throughout the

company, this visibility would help mapping of local visions toward enterprise

strategical visions. According to interviewee 3, the visualization would make it possible

t “So that we at least do not build two swimming pools at each side of the municipality

border for example. And also, we need to make information machine-readable and

available in our digitalization journey.”

• Challenge: We felt that we had many different models in our work when we talked to

each other, and because of that we had a hard time understanding each other because

everyone was talking in their own model (Interviewee 6).

• Recommendation: We need some kind of visualization, a city plan for the whole

information environment. (Interviewee 3 and 6) • Rationale: Many problems that are raised can be linked to the fact that there is not any

architecture in place. A city plan for our organization is very much appreciated and

needed so that we can have a good overview of our information flow. Interviewee 3

means that “When everything is in the city plan then we have a better understanding

about for example life cycle of the swimming pool, then we know for example that in 10

years we are going to need another pool and do not need to renovate bathrooms that

are not going to exist. So, we need to make information machine-readable and available

in our digitalization journey.”

Guideline 15: One solution for everything does not work, IT infrastructure and Data

layers should be central and reside in IT department, but Application and its use should

be released for Business units.

• Definition and context: IT department works in waterfall mode and is tasked as the

sole deliverer of solutions and services to business and this means oftentimes

bottlenecks for the business groups working agile requiring their demands met

continuously. In this context, IT is not meant to be capable of delivering solutions as

expected by business or local operations.

• Challenge: It is a real challenge to believe that you can do everything centrally at an

IT department, because you cannot. You can do this in the parts that are covering the

company’s general strategy, but you should understand the business very well. And it

is hard from distance to know what is happening. At the same time, it is advantageous

if there are experienced professionals who can architecturally describe and tell what it

is we try to steer towards, and what are the fundamental elements. It is both of them

central and local in a symbiotic relationship. The problem with central organization

tasks is that they take many requirements from everywhere and then it takes a very long

time to build it. • Recommendation: Define what is locale business development which can include

processes and methods and IT tools, and what are central or common process, method

and IT tools. It should not be binary and just because of it is about IT tools there are

separations in organization locale vs central.

• Rationale: IT is very complicated in the organization, employees in the IT department

have deep knowledge of their area, but they heavily lack insight in the business part of

49

the organization, but it is easier to get the people from business who are interested in

tech-tools and platforms and educate them so their capability increases, so that they can

solve their own problems and help their colleagues. This creates a very good synergy.

It is very hard to get someone from IT department who has deep knowledge in platform

developments and technology but lacks business knowledge and how the business

works.

51

6. Demonstration and Evaluation of Guidelines This chapter presents guidelines extracted from literature review and interviews at the case

company. Guidelines are presented in Section 6.1 and Evaluation of them are given in Section

6.2.

6.1 Preliminary Version of Guidelines

In this section the summary of guidelines is presented, there are 10 guidelines extracted from

literature and 6 recommendations from the interviews:

Guideline 1: Choose an EA framework and adapt it to fulfill the enterprise strategy needs and

organize an EA team with a head architect


responsible for stability, security and reliability of core infrastructure which can be strangled

slowly and one agile IT with speed, innovation and customer in focus OR (2) Merging IT

resources to Business and Shift the responsibility of IT systems to the Business units

Guideline 3: Empower each local department with a cross-functional team that blends data

engineering, data science and domain expertise and then communicate jurisdiction by

clarifying when decentralized teams are able to create prototypes, pilots or full-production

solutions



Guideline 5: Rethink the role of IT strategy from that of a functional-level strategy-aligned

but essentially always subordinate to business strategy to one that reflects a fusion between

IT strategy and Business strategy. This fusion is termed digital business strategy

Guideline 6: Formulate formal semantics of the models for applications in order to support

human user in adapting the models and also to automate the modification and adaption of

applications

Guideline 7: Use peer-to-peer decision making if decentralization is the desired organization

model

Guideline 8: Empower teams in local decision making by pushing down the jurisdiction

Guideline 9: Embrace and accept the changing Roles and Responsibilities in Agile

transformation

Guideline 10:

• If the organizations reciprocal interdependencies are high and size of project

teams are large, adopt a hybrid methodology.

• If the project team size is small, adopt an agile methodology.

52

• If project interdependencies are sequential, regardless of team size or project

volatility, the project manager should adopt a plan-driven methodology and

invest in technologies that will support the project planning process.

Guideline 11: Do not consider IT as a “cost center”, IT and Business should collaborate and

be integrated.


Thinking, Business Architect are needed and should reside in business units.


communicated by digital platforms available promoting the formal principles and guidelines

for reliability and safety. Applications should be in their status quo and not save information

in them.

Guideline 14: In order to create a common language and communication method, there needs

to be a global “city plan” or digital map/architecture, with central ownership at IT department,

of the whole enterprise so that we can understand each other better, and we can have our local

maps that work beneath this global map.

Guideline 15: One solution for everything does not work, IT infrastructure and Data layers

should be central and reside in IT department, but Application and its use should be released

for Business units.

6.2 Evaluation of the Guidelines

Given the time and resources available and vastness of the problem at hand, implementation of

the proposed artefacts was not practical or even feasible in the course of this bachelor thesis.

The time constraints needed for such an implementation, even if possible, are better suited to

a master thesis or even a doctoral thesis. Hence, making it possible for the researcher to

implement and evaluate the artefact over a longer period of time and provide with more solid

and genuine results. For this reason, a second round of interviews with an expert evaluation

method is performed as described in Chapter 3, Section 3.2.4, instead of an ex post evaluation

in order to determine if the solution artefact is as expected.

Appropriateness of the Interviewee

For the evaluation of guidelines, one expert (Interviewee 7) was chosen in order to evaluate

the proposed guidelines. The reason for this was because of the argument mentioned above,

Interviewee 7 is a senior business consultant and works with information modelling and

architecture of information systems, he is cofounder of a business consulting firm and was

chosen through sampling. And also because of the level of expertise and experience he has;

hence the credibility was delivered through evaluation of the problem domain.

Correctness

At a general overview, Interviewee 7 mentioned that the guidelines are understandable and can

be relevant and may express the reality of many businesses. He mentioned that what many

businesses suffer from is an old technology or legacy system and bad structure or information

model resulting in that employees have a hard time using the systems. According to the

53

Interviewee 7 “the digital platform in these organizations,(if there is any), must match and be

adjusted to the business requirements, …, the methodology is to map out the information and

create unified information groups, processes and compare them with the new desired system

and try to correct and adjust, normally when we as a business consulting do this job we tend

not to look much into As-is situation, because it is often the case that the system is in a bad

shape… our goal is to develop this ‘city plan’ toward the to-be state and we come back to As-

is later on”

In regard to the recommendation 14 and use of wording “Lack of a global digital

map/architecture”, Interviewee 7 was of the opinion that the term used "global digital map" is

probably not an established term and should better be replaced by "Business Architecture based

on a common information model" and he further added that “This architecture should be easy

to adapt to new organization because organizations change oftentimes. It is about to tie

together business and IT, and this is not done well in the existing frameworks, because they

are very IT-oriented and not business-oriented. If you take TOGAF as an example of a

Framework, it has been developed by the Open Group, where around 95 % of the members are

IT Vendors.”

Usefulness

In regard to the recommendation about the digital platforms issues, Interviewee 7 says that

“The risks are that the company might find it difficult to develop their legacy systems or that

the amount of technical debt becomes very high to ever think of the development of complex

unmanaged platforms”

In regard to information modelling and architecture, Interviewee 7 deems that “there are a lot

of Critical Success Factors to be taken care of. Financing and decision making are two major

factors between them, even if Development Teams have a good cooperation with the Architects

and Designers the money is often handled by Middle Management with too little knowledge

and too easy for the IT Vendors and consultants to handle in their advantage. I would for

example say that the top management should realize that it is important to know what to do.

And when we did Ladok, there was this principal at KTH who understood that the architecture

was important. So, this was an important success factor for the project. And then it was

important that there were participants from different units in the work. But then there were no

one from Ladok when we did the job, so those who should have built the system was not there

during the design phase and should now execute and build using the requirement specification

and they could not make sense of it. It was not their fault, because nobody thought about them;

it is important that they should partake. Then there was another difficulty for the latecomers

from other universities who joined, and they could not understand it either.”

When it comes to the integration of business and IT, Interviewee 7 suggest that “IT and

Business should be tied together, and this is not done well in the existing frameworks, because

they are very IT-oriented and not business-oriented. The platform resulted from this framework

should be easy to adapt to new organization because organizations change oftentimes”

In regard to architecture in recommendation “lack of architecture”, Interviewee 7 deem

architecture as an engineering job and explains “…But when it comes to architecture, we have

been very strict and done it for little groups, because it is an engineering job. The milky way is

a tool to help everybody in the business know what they should do. For example, when you

design a bridge like Slussen, you have a design and then when the bridge should be built a lot

54

of engineering is done. Then it is not the milky way that help in that situation. It takes many

experts to coordinate and collaborate to finish the job. It is many professions and views that

are included. The Opera house in Sydney for example was built after a design competition

winner’s work who was Danish, but no one in the committee knew that it is impossible to build

it, it took some 20-30 years before it was finished and it became 100 times more expensive than

what they have thought of.”

In regard to the implications in architecture he highlights the risks involved when architects

are not in close collaboration to the developers who are going to build models after the

architecture. Interviewee 7 states “We have done many ‘city-planning’s for businesses of many

kind, such as LADOK. We helped with the architecture and requirement specification and then

it took many years for the developers to realize it. It did not go as planned and expected because

of implications along the way… many developers joined late, and they could not understand

and build after the architecture and then many other latecomers joined (other universities) and

they had also a hard time to develop the system.”

He further mentions the risks this way: “It is dangerous to have only the design without the

knowledge of experts about its possibility to be realized and built. Globen as another example,

the designers were close to those who built it, it was a German company that build it in three

years which was planned and realized without any budget overrun. So, you can see the

difference between Opera house in Sydney and Globen in Stockholm. And it is the same for

architecture of business, it should be in close collaboration with those who build the system,

they should understand each other and how the information model should be used. Otherwise

it won’t go well. (and then one should know that technology is not always optimal- there is

technical debt- and then there is architectural debt, it is important to have for example

customer information just in one place, and not in many different applications, because it will

become complicated when many integrations take place, so what we do is that we promote

information groups; customer information in one place, product info in other app, customer

order in another one. This costs companies a lot of money when there are duplicates or the

same kind of information with different names and different places.)”

Regarding the recommendation about the roles in teams, Interviewee 7 is of the opinion that

“Looking forward there are a few signs that Autonomous Development Teams will work

together with Business Architects and Designers, DevOps is another title for developers who

work close to operations of business so architects should also have the similar position in a

business.”

6.3 Final Guidelines

After having evaluated the guidelines through expert review the final guidelines are presented

in this section.

Guideline 1: Build or choose an EA framework and adapt it to fulfill the enterprise strategy

needs and organize an EA team which is headed by an architect


responsible for stability, security and reliability of core infrastructure and one agile IT with

speed, innovation and customer in focus OR (2) Merging IT resources to Business and Shift

the responsibility of IT systems to the Business units

55

Guideline 3: Empower each local department with a cross-functional team that blends data

engineering, data science and domain expertise and then communicate jurisdiction by

clarifying when decentralized teams are able to create prototypes, pilots or full-production

solutions



Guideline 5: Rethink the role of IT strategy from that of a functional-level strategy-aligned

but essentially always subordinate to business strategy to one that reflects a fusion between

IT strategy and Business strategy. This fusion is termed digital business strategy

Guideline 6: Formulate formal semantics of the models for applications in order to support

human user in adapting the models and also to automate the modification and adaption of

applications

Guideline 7: Use peer-to-peer decision making if decentralization is the desired organization

model

Guideline 8: Empower teams in local decision making by pushing down the jurisdiction

Guideline 9: Embrace and accept the changing Roles and Responsibilities in Agile

transformation

Guideline 10: (1) If the organizations reciprocal interdependencies are high and size of project

teams are large, adopt a hybrid methodology. (2) If the project team size is small, adopt an

agile methodology. (3) If project interdependencies are sequential, regardless of team size or

project volatility, the project manager should adopt a plan-driven methodology and invest in

technologies that will support the project planning process.

Guideline 11: Do not consider IT as a “cost center”, IT and Business should collaborate and

be integrated


Thinking, Business Architect and DevOps should reside in business units where these roles are

needed and can leverage value to operations.


communicated by digital platforms available promoting the formal principles and guidelines

for reliability and safety. Applications should be in their status quo and not save information

in them.

Guideline 14: Design and build a Business Architecture with central ownership that is based

on a common Information Model associated with information groups, of the whole enterprise,

which can be complemented with locale architectures that work beneath this global

architecture.

Guideline 15: IT infrastructure and Data layers should be central and reside in IT department,

but Application and its use should be released for Business units.

57

7. Analysis, Discussion and Validity Threats

This chapter presents analysis and discussion of the results found along with validity threats.

Section 7.1 discusses the findings of the research. And finally, along with description of the

research limitations, the measures that were taken to mitigate the validity threats are provided

in Section 7.2.

7.1 Analysis

The guidelines extracted from the literature took on different approaches and proposed

solutions to address different BITA situations and perspectives. Majority of which claimed that

integrating these models can lead to a better understanding of BITA. From another angle, the

frequently used techniques, models and ideas used in the literature were (1) Enterprise

architecture (2) Bimodal Architecture (3) Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) (4) Modularity

and Loose-Coupling (5) Business Process Management (BPM) (6) Business Capability

Mapping (BCM) (7) Meta-Modeling (8) Ontology (9) Complexity Theory.

Enterprise Architecture

Being one of the most widely known and common topics in the literature aiming to solve BITA

in a holistic manner, this approach has been proposed and implemented at large and small

enterprises such as IBM, Microsoft and Intel (Jensen et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2008, Speckert

et al., 2013) However, this approach has been criticized for its antipattern to agility, but there

are proponents that claim this approach can take strategic approach and help organizations in

the long run (Wang et al., 2008; Ross et al., 2006) This issue of anti-pattern is problematic,

because we know that organizations face difficult challenges in bringing new innovations that

fundamentally disrupt their architecture. And it is often for this reason that organizations rely

on external consultants and organizational change management teams to internalize and

institutionalize the concepts that are non-native to the actors. Past studies on agile EA have

provided insights on how organizations can build enterprise architecture in increments through

institutionalization (Isham, 2008), However, there is little emphasis on how organizations

,especially the large ones, adopt and self-organize through agile EA methods.

Bimodal Architecture

This approach was proposed by Gartner (2014), Horlach et al. (2016) and Drews et al. 2017.

It is a new concept which has been widely discussed since its introduction by Gartner. This

architecture proposes a dual mode IT organization with their specific methods, processes and

mechanisms of management. This architecture’s duality approach was discussed by Horlach et

al. (2016): (1) the need for a faster/agile IT organization (2) or shifting in responsibilities of IT

to the business units. Although this approach has its pitfalls such as division of IT into a slow

and fast mode, making the fast mode more attractive and the slow mode less attractive, or the

risk of giving rise to creation of silos for products, processes and people which is contrary to

the notion of business transformation. This approach tends to introduce inertia or stagnation by

discouraging innovation in legacy platforms that normally supports the “cash cow” products,

according to critics such as Filho et al. (2018). Another question in this regard is the emergence

of new “Digital Natives” who are “digital fluent” and are capable of using and manipulating

the data (Colbert, 2016). It remains to see if this trend would force the companies to adapt to

58

the new situation with this type of workforce, in regard to the shift in responsibility if that

would be the case.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

This approach was proposed by many literatures such as (Haki and Forte, 2010; Abdi and

Dominic, 2010; Jensen et al., 2008; Chen, 2008). It usually refers to an organizational unifying

or coherent ICT architecture which serves the purpose of organizing and designing the

construction, selection and interconnection of hardware, software and communications assets

of the enterprise , according to Haki and Forte (2010). According to Haki and Forte, SOA is

characterized by the following five fundamental features: (1) it is based on services that can be

readily integrated, (2) it is based on standards, (3) it is available on multiple platforms, (4) it

provides self-contained (hence, loosely coupled) services, and (5) it incorporates and

presupposes a contract that specifies the functionalities offered and at the same time, guarantees

that they are replicable.

Modularity and Loose-Coupling

This approach proposes use of containers and Representational State Transfer (RESTful)

Application Programming Interfaces (API) to help exploit modularity and is regarded as a

powerful technique because of its properties, Horlach et al (2016) propose. Containers and

microservices are commonly used for modularization. Microservices, representing simple

services such as retrieving customer information, are encapsulated in containers and then

accessed via http and RESTful APIs. According to Horlach et al. (2016) proposal, based on

multiple containers, digital IT can build their applications by isolating the applications from

the operating system, containers can freely be deployed across multiple cloud environments or

in the in-house data center. Further approaches supporting a bimodal integration on the

architectural level include well known concepts like service-oriented architectures (SOA) and

data buses.

Business Process Management (BPM)

This approach is mainly used to design business architecture or business solution models, and

to keep them up to date. Jensen et al at IBM deemed BPM as the facilitator and accelerator of

BITA (Jensen et al., 2008). Malta and Sousa (2016) also highlighted the benefits of BPM and

discussed how to use it to achieve and maintain BITA. For this reason BPMN is utilized which

is the business counterpart to the Unified Modeling Language (UML) used in software design.

This approach aims to ideally bridge the gap between process intention and implementation

through description of sufficient detail and clarity into the sequence of business activities and

models the steps of a planned business process from end to end.

Business Capability Mapping (BCM)

This approach is a particular ability a business may possess or exchange to achieve a specific

purpose (TOGAF Standard Version 9.2, 2018). Bondel et al. (2018) used this method to

describe as an alignment methodology and clarified phases of the BCM implementation

approach in detail by following the open group guide, and present necessary activities and

resulting artefacts. The case organization have utilized this approach as a means towards

architecting the whole enterprise capabilities. However, the term capability, according to the

expert review, has not yet a proper definition in industry and the tools provided are first steps

59

toward engineering the architecture. He emphasized that “the tool milky way is a way to help

everybody in the business know what they should do. For example, when you design a bridge

like Slussen, then you have a design and then when the bridge should be built a lot of

engineering is done. Then it is not the milky way that help in that situation. It takes many

experts to coordinate and collaborate to finish the job. It is many professions and views that

are/should be included.”

Meta-Modeling

This approach refers to the abstract description of different enterprise parts. The meta-model

technique is an intuitionistic approach to represent different layers of EA to coherent business

and IT. Hinkelmann et al. (2016) integrated the meta-models of business model with

ArchiMate, which is an open and independent enterprise architecture modeling language to

support the description, analysis and visualization of architecture within and across business

domains in an unambiguous way. Kurniawan and Suhardi (2013) also combined meta-models

of BITA with TOGAF.

Ontology

This approach includes definitions of concepts and an indication of how concepts are

interrelated. Hinkelmann et al. (2016) proposed a BITA approach that combines EA modelling

with enterprise ontologies in order to gain an understanding of concepts and models from

different stakeholders. The study aruges that use of ontologies would lead to machine

intelligibility of enterprise architecture descriptions which is considered essential for agile

enterprises. According to Hinkelmann an ontological representation of an EA that is machine

understandable allows for automation. And also “a machine-understandable and interpretable

architecture description would allow to answer questions like ‘which processes are affected by

the replacement of an application?’, ‘which roles are involved in the process?’, ‘why did we

decide to customize this specific application?’”. This methodology was used in several other

articles (excluded from the study) with variations of EA ontologies to achieve BITA.

Complexity Theory

Being a widely used theory in the fields of organization studies, strategic management and

information systems, this approach was used in the study by Thummadi et al. (2017) to study

uncertainty and non-linearity in a railroad company in the US adopting agile EA. To understand

this complex phenomenon, Thummadi and his team used three key principles in order to

characterize the different aspects of complexity in studying agile EA: (1) initial triggers that

refer to shocks that a system receives due to internal or external disruptions caused either by

natural or artificial corrosions (2) push to the edges referring to the act of pushing a system to

an unstable or difficult situation for creating new order and (3) and self-organization referring

to the act of a system reorganizing without any external forces due to natural evolution.

To summarize, the major techniques mentioned were SOA (Haki and Forte, 2010; Abdi and

Dominic, 2010; Jensen et al., 2008; Chen, 2008) and EA (Thummadi et al 2017; Speckert et

al., 2013, Hinkelmann et al. 2016), separately or in combination. It becomes interesting when

the approaches taken by researchers and practitioners are compared to each other which begs

the questions in regard to whether there are discrepancies in trends. Meanwhile, the analysis

can also be discussed from other angles. For example, the approach taken by some scholars

60

who started their research from EA and explored the solutions on BITA, and others who began

with BITA and explained its requirements on EA.

Relating the findings to the study done by Luftman and Kempaiah in (2007) show that there

are positive correlations between the maturity of BITA and (1) IT’s organizational structure,

which is proposed by proponents of EA, bimodal architecture (2) the CIO’s reporting structure

and its relation to the recommendations about top management involvement and empowerment

of teams. The study done by Luftman and Kempaiah found also that (3) the federated IT

structures are associated with higher alignment maturity than centralized or decentralized

structures some studies/whitepapers investigated (Speckert et al., 2013; Gartner, 2018).

In regard to the guidelines, the overarching trend between academia and industry show that

majority of practitioners as well as researchers have utilized or porspose the same approaches

to align business and IT. For example, four interviewees expressed the need for an architecture

for the whole enterprise which is similar to those of EA researchers and practitioners who also

studied alignment or EA and proposed the EA to be the optimal solution. Zachman also regards

enterprise architecture as the determinant of survival in the age of information in order to deal

with increased complexity and change of enterprises. This approach has been on the gartner’s

hype cycle for quite sometime now and resides at the “Climbing the Slope of enlightement”

entering the Plateau of Productivity. The Climbing the Slope of enlightement means that “Some

early adopters overcome the initial hurdles, begin to experience benefits and recommit efforts

to move forward. Organizations draw on the experience of the early adopters. Their

understanding grows about where and how the innovation can be used to good effect and, just

as importantly, where it brings little or no value.”, according to Gartner (2020).

Another point of similarity are loose-coupling, modularity and SOA propositions, these

methods and architectures can be connected and compared to the principles of Industry 4.0 in

regard to modularity, which is mentioned in Guidelines 4, 6 and 14 and also by Ross et. al

(2006) mentioned in Section 2.3 about designing business processes for architecting towards

more agility stage 4 “Business modularity” during which loosely coupled IT-enabled business

process components are managed and reused, preserving global standards and enabling local

differences at the same time. And through this stage “Dynamic venturing” would be reachable

which makes rapidly reconfigurable, self-contained modules are merged seamlessly and

dynamically with those of business partners.

Guilines 5 and 11 share also similarities in that the consideration of IT and aligning its strategy

with the business strategy was highlighted by majority of Interviewees. This is one of crucial

factors enabling IT and Business be strategically aligned and collaborate with shared visions,

risk and rewards to the point where partnership is valued and is of co-adaptive essence,

mentioned in Luftman’s alignment maturity model in regard to partnership maturity.

Guidline 2, 3, 4 and 12 share also similiarties regarding the roles, methods and responsibilities

that need to be activated in the organization in order to achieve better alignment, methods such

as Desing Thinking, DevOps which are mainly IT developer roles and methods have been

mentioned and studied both in interviews and research papers. For example, Drews et al. (2017)

studied BizDevOps in the Bimodal EA management setting and presented what and how new

functions are required to support cross-team and cross-service issues in order to support the

Bimodality and faster IT. all interviewees were of the opinion that these roles are lacking in

R&D teams and should reside there, expert interviewee was also of the similar opinion by

saying “Looking forward there are a few signs that Autonomous Development Teams will

61

work together with Business Architects and Designers” and also “It is very important that the

architects are collaborating in the action or development. Devops is a title for developers who

work close to operations of business so architects should also have the similar position in a

business.”

7.2 Discussion

Findings of the thesis include the different guidelines finalized and described, out of which the

recommendations regarding the organizational design have the biggest effect and also

implications of different kind. However, what is clear is that there is a plethora of studies

aiming to solve the alignment issue in business and IT from different angles, this subject is not

new, and has always been one of the highly discussed subjects for CIO’s and Business

managers and owners.

Looking at the findings from another perspective give us the opportunity to discuss it on a

broader arena and that is the organizational change. Majority of findings propose different ways

of changing the organization to achieve better alignment. The framework for organizational

change articulated by Adler and Shenhar (1990) in this regard is a useful tool for assessing the

effort required to meet these challenges (see Figure 10). The challenges can be categorized

at four levels: management and organizational, people, process, and technology (Nerur et al.,

2005).

Of these four levels that Nerur et al. (2005) discuss, technological and process changes occur

at the skills and procedures levels, where the magnitude of change is relatively small, the level

of learning needed is low, and the time to adjust is short (weeks to month). However, the people

and management / organizational changes occur at the culture, strategy and structure levels,

with relatively large magnitude of change, the level of learning required is high, and

consequently the time to adjust is long (months to years).

Figure. 10. Framework for Organizational Change

62

It is although noteworthy to mention that with emergence of ICT consumerization and the two

generations, “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” at work (Colbert et al. 2016), different

patterns of relating and reacting to events, work structure and operations happen. “Digital

Natives” are characterized by having “digital fluency” meaning the proficiency and comfort

gained through extensive experience in using technology to achieve desired outcomes, and

“Digital Immigrants” who are users of technology and have been introduced to the technology

and adopted the technology later in their life. This phenomenon therefore engenders the need

that the enterprises of the future to be redesigned to take advantage of the competencies of this

diverse workforce. This way the effective communication and collaboration and leveraging

technology while countering potential downsides are ensured according to Colbert et al. (2016).

7.3 Validity Threats

Throughout the thesis work, measures were taken by the author as an attempt to investigate the

problem and demonstrate a true picture of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Different sources

and profiles with distinctive aspects to the problem area were studied and interviewed, in order

to ensure that the outcome of the research as credible as possible.

As for the transferability aspect, focus has been put to give as detailed and relevant information

as possible to the similar environments, so that the reader is able to decide whether it is similar

to situations she/he can relate to. The nature of the problem area made this aspect of validity

easier to handle since many companies are challenged in more or less the same way in their

journey toward digitalization and agile ways of working.

The author has tried his best to assure that a future investigator will be able to follow the steps

taken during the course of the study by providing detailed description of the research steps,

methodology and phases, hence the attempt to ensure the dependability criterion of validity

threats. Finally, to achieve confirmability the results of the research were discussed and

demonstrated to the practitioners and experts in the problem area in order to seek that the

findings are credible and not emerge from the authors predispositions.

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8. Conclusion, Limitations and Outlook

Business-IT alignment is a process in which an enterprise uses information technology to

achieve its objectives, typically improved financial performance or marketplace

competitiveness if the enterprise does business. Some definitions of this type of alignment

focus on outcomes (the ability of IT to produce business value) and others on means (the

harmony between IT and business within the organizations). And alignment in this regard is

the capacity to demonstrate a positive relationship between information technologies and the

accepted financial measures of performance.

Business and IT alignment has been and is still a classic and important issue for enterprises of

many kind. In this study some emerging trends such as digital natives in workplaces,

democratization of technology introduced by researchers and practitioners were mentioned that

highlight how lines between business and technology are getting blurred. Researchers have

acknowledged that this is the time in which the business and IT organization needs to

structurally re-strategize themselves to make good use of capabilities and some researchers

have also argued about how the business and IT have gone through the paradigm shift to the

digital business strategy (DBS).

The problem investigated in this thesis was the lack of insight in or fragmented knowledge

regarding organizational design or architecture of modern enterprises, in both academia and

industry. The research question this thesis investigated was: “How can enterprises align

business and IT?” So that the components of the enterprise share a common understanding and

are able to propose productive modern IT solutions architecturally appropriate for both

business/operations units and IT department.

To address the research question, the need to delve into the domain of BITA and organizational

science and design were felt and theory about these domains were elicited which was then

materialized in a list of recommendations. These guidelines only deal with the organization of

enterprise and does not cover implementation and further detailed activities as such. The aim

is to guide organizations in organizing for their specific needs and at providing bases for future

research.

When searching for scientific resolutions or standard models and frameworks in well-known

research journals and reference sources, there were not any “most agreed upon” solution from

literatures guiding enterprises in their (re)organization. Therefore, this thesis tried to address

this by extracting guidelines and evaluating them from both the academic literatures and

although from the practice.

The major findings were the final fifteen guidelines majority of which require the organization

to change, and hence requiring the need for change readiness to be feasible, and that it is wanted

in business units, IT department and at top management. Findings show different approaches

from different research papers on the topic of alignment and agile organization and examined

the difficulties and challenges in achieving or maintaining alignment. Furthermore, interviews

with experts and professionals were included to complete the thesis’ overall purpose and goals,

which was to give a combined perspective of both academic works and practice.

The research method was qualitative and followed the Design Science Paradigm (DSP) that

was governed by inductive reasoning (Johannesson and Perjons, 2012). Data collection was

primarily conducted via literature study and interviewing. Data analysis was conducted via the

64

criteria that have been suggested for evaluating interviewees and expert reviews. The selection

of the interviewees was conducted using the convenience sampling method with pre-defined

selection criteria.

The second round of interview results have shown that the implementation of guidelines,

although majority of them are at high level, is realistic and could help enterprises. According

to expert review interviewee, the guidelines covered an exhaustive list of recommendations.

He agreed that many organizations would benefit from the guidelines.

For this paper, only a single case organization was selected. This is a limitation for the

generalization of the results, as the emerging digitalization in companies is diverse and also the

fact that this have been learned from other studies. While many case studies give helpful ideas

and recommendations, these recommendations are not widely generalizable because they lack

theory development to fully explain their results. It is also a challenge for both practitioners in

industry and researchers when the outcomes are often proposed and is regarded as best

practices that maybe works in a system or environment and may not be appropriate or regarded

as best practice in another one. Nevertheless, the case can still be relevant for many companies

finding themselves in a similar situation. Thus, studies on companies from other industries and

branches are a promising avenue for future research.

Based on the findings of the literature review, the suggestion for further research on BITA

should be conducted in the following areas:

• The differences between the results and those observed in whitepapers from the open group,

Gartner and IBM are interesting and potential starting points for future research. These

findings raise a question; whether there is a mismatch between academic research and

practice.

• Future research in this area could be conducted through interviews with people at different

organizations of an enterprise, to find out on a wider spectrum what can help achieve better

alignment.

• Topics “BizDevOps”, “DevOps”, “Design Thinking”, “User Experience”, “IT Architect”

and “Business Architect” roles and methods are identified as trends with major publicity

both in research papers studied, whitepapers and interviews as well. These topics have not

been considerably addressed in academic publications and some of them are fairly new.

Therefore, these areas certainly qualify for further investigation.

65

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Appendix A.1

Interview questions

Appropriateness

1. What is your job title?

2. What do you do and How long have you worked in this position?

3. What is your definition of Business Development?

4. How does your company work with business development today? Is there Business

Development as a separate function or section?

Partnership Maturity

5. Is there a clear vision of what the IT and Business should fulfill?

6. What are the strategies for reaching the target?

7. How do you work to communicate this target to different stakeholders?

8. What does this work with goals and strategies look like?

Skills Maturity

9. How is Business Development supported from management?

10. How does this support work?

11. What roles and functions are active in the work with Business Development?

12. What skills and competencies are needed to do the work?

13. Are there any roles or competencies that you feel you are missing today?

14. What does broad IT competencies and computer experience have for effect? How does this

mirror itself in the work?

Communication Maturity

15. Are you actively working to communicate the work that is conducted within Business

Development and IT development?

Scope and Architecture Maturity

16. How do you think the architecture of the business should be shaped?

72

17. How does your company use different forms of IT support to support and streamline business

development?

Challenges

18. What obstacles or difficulties do you see mainly with the Business Development work in the

near future?

19. Are there any future changes that are likely to affect Business Development work in respect to

IT development?

20. What challenges do you experience regarding the IT and Business development in the near

future?

21. Anything else you want to add?

Thank you very much!

73

Appendix A.2 Second round of interviews

1. What is your job title? What do you do and how long have you worked in this position?

2. What services/products does your business offer?

3. What is your opinion about the recommendations?

4. Are they real and correct in your opinion? You can order them in the level of importance and actuality.

5. What implications do these recommendations have for companies?

6. What risks and opportunities are involved with these recommendations?

Thank you for your time

75

Appendix B.1

Figure B.1. Luftman’s business-it alignment maturity assessment model

77

Appendix B.2

Figure B.2. Bimodal IT – Characteristics of Traditional and Digital IT (Horlach, Drews, and

Schirmer 2016)

79

Appendix C.1

Figure C.1. Barlow et al. Methodology Selection Framework

81

“While we cannot predict the future, we will most surely live it. Every action and decision we

take - or don't - ripples into the future. For the first time, we have the capability, the

technology, and the knowledge to direct those ripples.”

(Jacque Fresco)

TRITA-EECS-EX-2020:836

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