Magno Queiroz

Strategic IT Alignment: Twenty-Five Years On

All research streams can trace their lineage to an initial paper or series of papers. The information systems (IS) field – despite its relative youthfulness – can point to examples of seminal research by Davis (1989) on technology acceptance or Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1996) on information technology (IT) payoffs as the foundation of whole new areas of research. After almost a quarter century and 3200 citations (as of October 2014), many researchers would also include work by Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) – first published in the IBM Systems Journal under the heading, ‘Strategic Alignment: Leveraging Information Technology for Transforming Organizations’ – on the list of seminal and transformative IS publications.

A model for decision support in business-driven IT service portfolio management using SLA-dependent criteria and under uncertainty

This paper presents a model to support decision making for investments in IT services. As such it contributes to IT service portfolio management. Investment options are analyzed and ranked according to a utility index estimated from possible positive and negative business impact of IT services due to IT Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance and violations. The Balanced Scorecard framework is used to infer the linkage between IT and business activities. The approach takes uncertainty into account by means of utility theory and interval arithmetic. Numerical illustrations encompassing tangible SLA-dependent criteria demonstrate how the approach may be of use.

Prioritizing Information Technology Service Investments under Uncertainty

We explore the challenge of selecting the best among a set of alternative IT investments. Solving this problem is important since the difference between alternative investment options may be drastic in terms of business results, both positive and negative. The resulting model takes as input a set of investment alternatives and a parameterized description of IT services, and provides as output a Preference Index for each alternative. The solution takes into account such characteristics as epistemic and aleatory uncertainty as well as the decision makers attitude toward risk. Through a case study and a sensitivity analysis, we conclude that the model is useful in practice and robust; we also describe its domain of validity.

The role of IT application orchestration capability in improving agility and performance

Abstract This paper investigates how IT application orchestration – a dynamic capability encapsulating a firm’s ability to refresh its application portfolio through a process of building, buying, and retiring IT applications – impacts firm performance. We propose a conceptual model in which the effect of IT application orchestration on firm performance is mediated by process agility. We further propose that a firm’s strategic orientation moderates the effect of IT application orchestration capability on process agility. Analysis of data from an international survey of IT executives supports our proposed hypotheses. This research contributes to the emergent literature on dynamic capabilities by proposing and testing a theory of how IT application orchestration capability affects agility and firm performance.

A framework to support investment decisions using multi-criteria and under uncertainty in IT service portfolio management

This paper presents a framework to support decision making for investments in IT services. Investment options are analyzed and ranked according to utility indices estimated from possible positive and negative business impact of IT services. The approach takes multiple criteria and uncertainty into account by means of multi-attribute utility theory and interval arithmetic. The business impact of IT services is estimated by the analysis of criteria in one of three groups: Purely financial, Service Level Agreement (SLA) dependent and Subjective. Numerical illustrations encompassing tangible and intangible criteria demonstrate how the approach may be of use.