Measuring and Evaluating Business-IT Alignment for RAD Projects Using the REFINTO Framework and Tool

REFINTO is a requirement engineering framework and tool aimed at facilitating business-IT alignment by using functional and non-functional domain ontologies to guide the rapid application development (RAD) process in financial service software development. In this paper we present the REFINTO measurement and evaluation mechanism for assessing alignment at the tactical and operational levels leveraging the REFINTO framework and tool. The mechanism is based on the Balanced Scorecard and Strategic Alignment Maturity Model. The mechanism offers an innovative and practical method of measuring alignment on a more granular level – per project basis – rather than on high level strategic indicators that often fail to identify and assess the contribution of alignment factors with accuracy. The research described in this paper has been applied to support RAD projects in a top 5 investment bank helping minimize business-IT misalignment prevalent in the RE stage of RAD projects resulting in shorter IT application service delivery times and enhanced quality of IT applications.