Business and IT Strategy Alignment

I believe since the IT strategy is to support the business strategy, IT strategy has to be built into the business strategy by including the IT managers and personnel in the strategy setting, implementation and management process. I think that is what alignment means. In this way innovation becomes a collaborative effort. I think this approach is better in a fast changing business environment in case the strategy needs to change. But the question is should digital strategy be separated from IT strategy or should the digital strategy be part of the IT strategy? 

So, it is about the coming together of all systems in other to better achieve the business goals and serve the customers better. The communication about business/IT alignment within the organisation must go down from top to the bottom, especially within the IT department. The reasons that business services and information systems services fail to be aligned may be due to a lack of clear definition of the link between business and departmental goals so that there are differences in vision.

The alignment between the strategic and operational levels will change depending on the size of the business. A large company will need to have large IT operations, large or complex processes, infrastructures, skills and large customer base which may be spread all over the place or even internationally, with different methods of reaching them. By contrast, a small organisation may have a single process, few skills and one or few people dealing with operations. So, the level of communication, resources, commitment and development of culture required is different and will need to be more pervasive in a large organisation in order to bring about any change.