Time is Money! Time lag management in Business-IT Strategy : Emprical Validation of Theories

Abstract: For today's organizations to fully optimize their two major priorities;which are reducing cost and increasing revenue, they need to be involved in continuous modifications and constant renewals of right mechanism towards alignment between business and IT strategies. This paper investigates issues in strategic alignment, the specifics were: What causes time lag between business-IT strategy implementation, how can organization manage this time lag better, and finally how alignment can be achieved in business-IT strategy. Thorough literature review has been carried out, to come up with causes of time lag between business-IT strategy. Then, two case studies together with three experts' interviews have been conducted in order to validate causes of time lag in business-IT strategy. The results shows that, lack of understanding of IT departments by business department, and lack of understanding of business department by IT department and protocol rigidity are the major causes of time lag that exists between business-IT strategy. While, the lesser factors were: not using the IT departments in defining the business strategy and usage of business terminologies by business department in communicating with the IT department