Creating a Strategic IT Architecture Competency: Learning in Stages

By J. Ross. MIS Q. Executive, 2003

515 citations recorded by the source corpus.

IT architecture is often assumed to follow business strategy, to align IT with the business's strategic objectives. Increasingly, though, many business strategies depend on specific underlying IT capabilities. To develop a synergy between business strategy and IT architecture, firms must develop organizational competencies in IT architecture. My research has identified four IT architectural stages, each with its own requisite competencies. The "application silo architecture stage" consists of IT architectures of individual applications. The "standardized technology architecture stage" has an enterprise-wide IT architecture that provides efficiencies through technology standardization. The "rationalized data architecture stage" extends the enterprise-wide IT standards to data and processes. And the "modular architecture stage" builds onto enterprise-wide global standards with loosely coupled IT components to preserve the global standards while enabling local differences. Each stage demands different organizational competencies to implement the architecture and prepare the firm to move to the next stage

Subfields: Information Systems, Management Information Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cdd44d14ffb96f933479ebaff9db01005edbecc3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Information Systems

1. M. Markus
2. T. Coltman
3. Paul P. Tallon
4. W. Boh
5. Theresa A. Pardo
6. Bill McKelvey
7. Jiye Mao
8. Hind Benbya

In Management Information Systems

1. T. Coltman
2. Rajeev Sharma
3. Magno Queiroz
4. Jiye Mao
5. M. Markus
6. Paul P. Tallon
7. Ravi Patnayakuni
8. W. Boh

Citations in the corpus

• Information technology and the search for organizational agility: A systematic review with future research possibilities (2019, background): “Only 6% of organizations at that time had a sufficiently flexible architecture to where data could begin to drive agility (Ross, 2003, p. 40; Ross et al., 2006, p. 77).”
• Using coevolutionary and complexity theories to improve IS alignment: a multi-level approach (2006, background): “Ross (2003) suggests that organizations must develop an IS architecture competency to dynamically adjust strategies and technologies and create a mutually reinforcing pattern of evolving, tightly aligned IS and business components.”
• Participation in Development and Implementation - Updating An Old, Tired Concept for Today's IS Contexts (2004, background): “With the rise of enterprise software and changed beliefs about the value of standardization (Ross, 2003), the scope of IT projects has increased, often encompassing entire organizations.”
• Using Enterprise Architecture Standards in Managing Information Technology (2006, background): “66]), it often restricts the options of business units, thus resulting in a less optimal local solution [44, 74].”
• Firm Performance Impacts of Digitally Enabled Supply Chain Integration Capabilities (2006, background): “It requires standards for the integration of data, applications, and processes to be negotiated and implemented in order for real-time connectivity between distributed applications to be achieved (Ross 2003; Weill and Broadbent 1998).”
• Smart city as urban innovation: focusing on management, policy, and context (2011, background): “” Enterprise architecture is crucial for designing and developing systems that are aligned with business process management, identified within the enterprise architecture not as project-specific but rather as whole of government [38,60,89,91,92].”