Investigating the Strategic Alignment of Business and Information Technology Using the Luftman Model and ITIL Best Practice

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the strategic alignment of business and information technology using Luftman model and ITIL best practice, and since the study of this alignment requires an in-depth study of an industry or an organization, one of the Iranian defensive organizations (in standardization and information technology field) has been selected as the case study. In the first stage, the existence of IT strategy was assessed. Secondly, the degree of alignment of IT strategy with business strategy was assessed. The results showed that the IT strategy in the studied organization is on average 66.26 percent, which indicates the relative and acceptable ability of the organization to define IT strategy. Then, after analyzing the strategic alignment of IT and organization, it was found that the alignment degree of these organizations is generally above average. The results showed the lowest average in the area of business infrastructure and the highest average in the business infrastructure area. It is recommended that similar organizations use the ITIL V4 to assess and align the organization's strategies with the IT strategies.

Keywords

• business infrastructure
• information technology
• information technology infrastructure library
• luftman model
• strategic alignment