Business organizations have become heavily dependent on information technology (IT) services. The process of alignment is defined as the mutual synchronization of business goals and IT services. However, achieving mature alignment between business and IT is difficult due to the rapid changes in the business and IT environments. This article provides a systematic review of studies on the alignment of business and IT. The research articles reviewed are based on topics of alignment, the definition of alignment, history, alignment challenges, phases of alignment, alignment measurement approaches, the importance of alignment in business industries, how software engineering helps in better alignment, and the role of the business environment in aligning business with IT. It aims to present a thorough understanding of business-IT alignment and to provide a list of future research directions regarding alignment. To perform the systematic review, we used the guidelines developed by Kitchenham for reviewing the available research papers relevant to our topic. ACM Reference Format:Ullah, A. and Lai, R. 2013. A systematic review of business and information technology alignment.

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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the current literature that has explored project success in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector.Design/methodology/approachThe literature search was carried out for related articles in three databases: the Web of Science, Scopus and Ebscohost. Using a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology, 75 related articles were sorted out. Furthermore, the methods of frequency and content analysis were used to identify, categorize and arrange critical success factors (CSF) of ICT projects based on their importance, interrelation and cultural regions.FindingsThe findings in this study revealed that interest in researching success in ICT projects has increased significantly during the last five years. Through reviewing the selected articles, 25 CSF were identified. User participation, stakeholder relationship, project manager emotional intelligence, communication skills, and leadership skills, and top management support in the project emerged as the most important factors for ICT projects. Furthermore, we found that each regional group gives different level of importance to different CSF.Practical implicationsThis study gives the opportunity to practitioners to control the highest value CSF to increase the success rate of ICT projects carried out in different cultural regions.Originality/valueAs the first study of its type, CSF were divided for different cultural regional groups. This paper further explained that certain CSF have different levels of importance in different culture regions. This study suggests that regional culture needs consideration during the evaluation of CSF.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a model that determines whether how much effort of preventive maintenance action is worthwhile for the consumer over the post-sale product life cycle of a repairable complex product where the product is under warranty and subject to stochastic multimode failure process, that is, damaging failure and light failure with different probabilities.Design/methodology/approachThe expected life cycle cost is designed for a warranted product from the consumer perspective. The product failure is quantified with failure rate function, which is the number of failures incurred over the product life cycle. The authors consider the failure rate function reduction method in their model where the scale parameter of a failure rate function is maximized by applying the optimal preventive maintenance level. The scale parameter of any failure distribution refers to the meantime to failure (MTTF). The first-order condition is applied with respect to the maintenance level in order to achieve the convexity of the nonlinear function of the expected life cycle cost function.FindingsThe authors have found analytically the close form of the preventive maintenance level, which can be used to find the optimal reduced form of the failure rate function of the product and the minimum product expected life cycle cost under the given condition of multimode stochastic failure process. The authors have suggested different maintenance policies to consumers in order to implement the proposed preventive maintenance model under different conditions. A numerical example further illustrated the analytical model by considering the Weibull distribution.Practical implicationsThe consumer may use this study in the accurate modeling of the life cycle cost of a product that is under warranty and fails with a multimode failure process. Also, the suggested preventive maintenance approach of this study helps the consumer in making appropriate maintenance decisions such as to minimize the expected life cycle cost of a product.Originality/valueThis study proposes an accurate estimation of a life cycle cost for a product that is under the support of warranty and fails with multimode. Furthermore, for such a kind of product, which is under warranty and fails with multimode, this study suggests a new preventive maintenance approach that assures the minimum expected life cycle cost.

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