Means for building models to align information systems support to specific application domains

Abstract

Information Systems (IS) are today the cornerstone of modern organizations, in which they support specific application domains or business areas that can give a strategic advantage. In this context, strategic alignment that exists when the IS and business goals and activities are in concordance, becomes crucial. Several approaches have been proposed for building strategic alignment. However, for aligning IS support to specific application domains it is necessary to deal with their specific characteristics. Reviewing the literature, strategic alignment approaches addressing these specific characteristics have been proposed by extending the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) [1]. Nevertheless, means for building new models from the SAM constitutive elements have not been proposed yet. To cope with this lack, we propose two metamodels: the SAM static view metamodel and the SAM dynamic view metamodel and a methodology to use them. An illustrating example shows the applicability of our approach.