The Architect's Role in Business-IT Alignment

The importance of alignment between business and information technology (IT) for generating IT business value has been emphasized in many research papers. Current literature broadly supports that capable and sustainable enterprise architecture is essential to support business processes as well as future agility. In that respect, individuals performing the role of an enterprise architect are at the core of the interface between business and IT and their relationship with the business side is crucial to generate IT business value. Employing a qualitative study, the authors show that competencies such as profound work experience and business-related topics serves to bridge the IT-business gap and may foster alignment. This result contributes to alignment and governance literature as it emphasizes an individual level antecedent of business-IT alignment.