Information Technology roadmapping: an approach for aligning IT strategies with business strategies

Applying information technology (IT) effectively, is one of the key factors for organizational success in gaining competitive advantages and delivering better services to customers. Incremental growth of IT innovations and solutions, however result in challenges in aligning IT strategies with business strategies (IT-alignment), and consequently applying IT effectively. Although various models and methods have been developed during recent decades to overcome such challenges, still IT-alignment is among the top ten issues for IT managers. Technology roadmapping (TRM) is an effective approach for aligning business strategies with technology planning and management. However, this approach has not been applied officially in the context of IT for solving IT-alignment problems. In this research, first we review and analyze issues and unsolved challenges in the area of IT alignment, based on recent surveys in this area. Second, we elaborate and analyze the concept of technology roadmapping by focusing on its theoretical and experimental aspects. Then, we depict a systematic mapping between different conceptual aspects of technology roadmapping as an approach, and the unresolved issues of IT-alignment, to evaluate how much TRM can be an effective approach for addressing IT-alignment issues. Finally, the concept of information technology roadmapping is elaborated and a prototype of this roadmap is developed for a service-oriented organization.