Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Maturity of IT Business Strategic Alignment Mechanisms

Abstract

Achieving IT-business alignment has been a long-standing, critical, information management issue. A theoretical framework of the maturity levels of management practices and strategic IT choices that facilitate alignment was empirically tested and validated. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated 6 factors and identified 22 indices to measure strategic alignment maturity. A mixed model repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) obtained significant results for both the main effect and interaction effect of differences for the 6 maturity factors across the 11 business units. Regression analysis found a positive association between overall strategic alignment maturity and respondents’ self-rated maturity. These exploratory findings show promise for the assessment instrument to be used as a diagnostic tool for organizations to improve their IT-business alignment maturity levels.