B-SCP: A requirements analysis framework for validating strategic alignment of organizational IT based on strategy, context, and process

Abstract

Ensuring that organizational IT is in alignment with and provides support for an organization's business strategy is critical to business success. Despite this, business strategy and strategic alignment issues are all but ignored in the requirements engineering research literature. We present B-SCP, a requirements engineering framework for organizational IT that directly addresses an organization's business strategy and the alignment of IT requirements with that strategy. B-SCP integrates the three themes of strategy, context, and process using a requirements engineering notation for each theme. We demonstrate a means of cross-referencing and integrating the notations with each other, enabling explicit traceability between business processes and business strategy. In addition, we show a means of defining requirements problem scope as a Jackson problem diagram by applying a business modeling framework. Our approach is illustrated via application to an exemplar. The case example demonstrates the feasibility of B-SCP, and we present a comparison with other approaches. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.