How IT Governance should be established in order to have a good alignment between IT, Business and external Service Providers

IT governance deals with connections between business focus and IT management. The goal of clear governance is to assure that investment in IT generates true value to business. IT governance is defined as the processes, structures and relational mechanisms that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT and business alignment begins and ends with good IT governance. Business-IT alignment is the fit and integration among business strategy, IT strategy, business and IT structures. Research has shown that organizations where IT strategies and operations are aligned with business strategies and operations seem to be more innovative in use of new information technolo-gies. The objectives for this research are to find out the elements for a good IT governance and understand what are the components and requirements for an effective Business- IT alignment. The study will seek answers to the following three research questions: (RQ1) what are the elements for a good IT Governance” , (RQ2) “How to achieve a real alignment between IT, business and external service providers”, and (RQ3) “what are the drawbacks in the current IT Governance in the case company”. The research includes theoretical part and the empirical part. Theoretical part through literature review introduces the main concepts and frameworks. Empirical part describes the research methods. This study was conducted by using a qualitative and quantitative methods. The data was gathered via web survey in a case company where the author is currently working. The questions in the survey are based on theoretical framework called the Strategic Alignment Model. The survey was conducted in February 2020, the survey was sent to preselected persons in IT and Business. With the web survey, the target was to get the understanding what are the drawbacks with the current IT Governance and Business-IT alignment. As a result of the study, all research questions were answered. Based on the survey results in the case company, clear improvement areas were found in the areas of IT and business pro-cess understanding, roles and responsibilities, processes and collaboration. Recommenda-tions for the case company are made to improve the Business-IT alignment especially on tac-tical and operational levels