IT Management Processes

The alignment of IT to business has been one of the main concerns of many IT managers for more than two decades. Since 2004, this problem has been ranked among the top studies that measure the importance of the concerns of IT managers and CIOs. It has been shown that companies that achieve greater benefits of productivity, performance and presence in the market are those that are able to take advantages of technologies and align IT to business.

It is clear that the search for a good level of alignment, between business objectives and the technologies that support them, has transformed the way IT management is conducted today in many organizations. This occurs not only at the level of strategies for the optimal use of technologies and resources already in place (for example, legacy systems, support infrastructure, etc.), but at the level of the specification for the new technologies that are required to support business processes that contribute successfully to the achievement of strategic objectives. 

In addition, the speed at which IT evolves increases the complexity of this alignment, because there is not enough time to assimilate the new technological changes. It is a fact that changes in IT cause, in turn, changes in the way of working and in the organization of business processes. On the other hand, changes in business strategies - to conform to the globalized world - produce changes in the business processes, which in turn, cause changes in the technologies required to perform these processes. The implementation of new and more advanced technologies usually requires the restructuring of the processes and activities needed to manage them. This situation creates a kind of cyclic relationship cause-effect-cause that the organization must manage in a strategic way.

It is important to mention that the strategic goals are also temporary, with a horizon that does not go beyond to three or four years. This is due to the influence of the changing and competitive global environment that totally depends on information technologies. That is the main reason for extending the alignment problem reached in an instant of time, to an ongoing maintenance of this alignment throughout a longer period of time. The problem of safeguarding the evolution of the links between the business and the technology, called in the literature the co-evolution of the alignment Business/IT, has been treated from different and complementary perspectives.

In the context of this article, we understand by business/IT alignment, the establishment of parallel and progressive links, among certain elements of the business (specifically, strategic goals and key processes), and those technological elements that support the achievement of the strategic goals; i.e., the information systems, the data and the IT infrastructure. Whole elements are considered the primary components of what is called the Enterprise Architecture (EA) of an organization. 

According to the previous paragraphs, the problem of strategic alignment between business and IT is an arduous and complex task. Consequently, our proposal establishes that an appropriate business/IT alignment must be based on the interdependent and complementary knowledge specified inside an EA. Thus, any variation in the organizational needs, strategies, processes and activities, will be immediately captured and analyzed to establish what effect, and consequent change, must be carried out in current links with Information Systems, Data and IT. 

The IT department has the responsibility of planning, implementing, and operating and continuously improving the enterprise architecture of its organization; so that the enterprise architecture can provide the IT services that the organization needs. It is also the responsibility of this unit, to maintain the enterprise architecture aligned with the strategies and goals of the organization. Subsequently, the specification of a business processes model that describe the integrated set of technical, administrative and management processes of an IT department, is essential. This business process model will lead to directly achieve the goals of the IT department, and complementary, it will lead, indirectly, to reach the goals and strategies defined for the whole organization. 

Currently, the alignment business/IT has been studied from alternative points of view; which go from management throughout operational perspective proposals where various authors describe the crucial technical details of systems and technologies. Some of these studies are based on standards and reference models such as: COBIT, ITIL, CMMI, ISO 9000:2007, etc., where the studies specify practices, processes for controlling technologies, and heuristics based on case studies. However, these proposals are, in a certain way, independent and do not cover all the categories of processes that are carried out in any IT department.

As we pointed out, in an IT department there are typical processes such as management of technical and operational issues, as well as processes related with the governance of the information systems and technology resources; but, other management processes, such as the management of technical or specialized human resources, financial resources, physical infrastructure, and administrative management of risks, are not integrated in the above mentioned studies or proposals.

On the other side, we find that EA has been used as a base for the governance of technologies and for the definition of the information systems of an organization. However, we have not found in the literature of the area, results of research or practice related to the specific use of the relationship between the EA and the business processes executed by the IT department of an organization.

Considering that the IT department is responsible for defining, operating and maintaining the enterprise architecture of an organization, the practical use of this critical relationship remains the main contribution of this work. We believe that there is a direct dependence between the implantation of a specific business processes model for the organizational unit responsible for the enterprise architecture, and the positive and effective role that will play this EA in the achievement of the alignment between business, IT technologies strategies and policies.

The model of IT management processes described in this article is an integrated set of the essential managerial and technical processes that an organization should implement in order to carry out an efficient and effective management of the EA resources (modeled, created, contained, and supervised) within an organization.