Strategic Alignment Maturity Assessment

A valuable diagnostic & benchmarking tool for
improving IT-business integration/relationships

Applied by over one-third of the global 1,000 companies

A summary of the Strategic Alignment Model

Alignment considers both how IT is aligned with the business and how the business should or could be aligned with IT. It is not a question of whether an organization is aligned or not aligned. It is a question of how to enhance the IT-business relationship to improve opportunities to leverage IT.

In today’s digital world, IT and business goals should be indistinguishable from one another. The Strategic Alignment Maturity Assessment is a proven vehicle for attaining this objective.

Terms such as integrate, harmony, link, fuse, affiliate, IT is the business, coalition, fit, match, meld, converge, interwoven, holism, empathy, synchronization, and partner are frequently used synonymously with the term alignment. Whatever term you prefer, it is a persistent/pervasive problem that demands an ongoing process to ensure that IT and business strategies adapt effectively and efficiently together.

On the left is an alignment maturity assessment tool available to enhance the relationship between service providers and clients.

Perhaps most important is recognizing that there is significant research available that demonstrates the relationship between alignment and firm performance.

Enlightening line management on technology’s possibilities and limitations is hard; so is setting IT priorities, developing resources and skills, and integrating systems/services. It is even tougher to keep business and IT aligned as business strategies and technology evolve.

On the right is an alignment maturity assessment tool available for Private Equity firms and others conducting a due diligence assessment of the acquired company’s IT organization.

There is no silver-bullet solution, but achieving/improving alignment is possible. Over 15 years of research has found that mature alignment requires effective governance, partnership, communications, value analytics, technical services, and people, as illustrated in the alignment maturity criteria below.

The methodology developed by Dr. Jerry Luftman for assessing how ready your company or business unit is to create, improve, and sustain alignment has been successfully applied by over one-third of the Global 1,000 companies, as well as 100s of organizations of every size. In addition to identifying opportunities for improving the business-IT relationship, the benchmarking insights are vital.

While over 80% of the assessments were done via interviews with C-level executives and other IT stakeholders, the set of questions used as an interviewer’s guide can be found by clicking the picture to the left.

Lead Researcher: Dr. Luftman

Significant new research provides demonstrable evidence correlating organizations’ overall performance with higher IT-business alignment maturity.

Available Strategic Alignment Maturity
(SAM) Books/Papers/Presentations to Download:

While there are dozens of published papers/articles about the assessment (some of the papers are available below, as well as the survey link above), the most complete description can be found via the book available online and in print (ISBN: 978-1-257-93014-2) from Lulu and Amazon. Click the cover for the Amazon link.