Alignment of Business and IT Architectures in the German Federal Government: A Systematic Method to Identify Services from Business Processes

Achieving alignment between business and IT is a top priority of information systems management. To facilitate the alignment of business and IT, enterprise architecture management frameworks have been developed. They support the coordination of various architecture types. In this paper, we focus on the alignment of the business and information systems architecture. Specifically, we present a new method to identify services from business process models. The novel contribution of our approach is to show how the business architecture can be used to drive the organization of the information systems architecture and to ensure its alignment with business requirements. The presented method was developed using a design science approach. Its applicability was evaluated in a controlled study. The evaluation results suggest that novice users are able to effectively use the method. It was furthermore perceived as useful and easy to use, which is an indicator that the proposed method will be accepted in practice.