Currently there are several different ideas on how to align the organization with technology (IT), organization and processes to make the organization able to work smarter. However in the real world a lot of IT projects and attempts to apply alignment of IT in organizations leads to failure.
To avoid potential failures then the members of the Enterprise Architecture community have developed several frameworks which might be applied to make the EA projects work and yet the projects fail in the organizations that claim to be mature.
The question is if the alignment of IT and Business is a science or if it is an art form. Some CIOs, CXOs, teams and organizations are simply just better to apply EA thinking (models, foundations, process management etc.) than others though they make use of the exact same principles which founds the platform for Enterprise Architecture.
So talent has to be a part of the equation or even luck has to be a part of the EA. Science normally don’t think on luck or talent when research and science is done (especially if it is from the point of view of natural sciences) and therefore these factors are overlooked or simply not put into consideration.
The Alignment of IT with the business side has to be considered both an art form and a science since the science part shows how alignment is supposed to be done and where the art is when those people who are about to implement the alignment does apply the implementation.
As it is with Coherency Management then people is key since it is people who work with the systems which are supposed to be aligned, people who takes the decisions and people who implement the processes beneath the alignment projects. It is easily concluded that people are different they have different world views, different ways to interact and they are different in the way they use tools to aid them in achieving their goals. Alignment of IT is dependent on how people react to changes and how people interact with one another and with the technology and the information systems and therefor is the art form a very dominant but the science form can’t be neglected since the science crystallize and defuse the ideas of alignment, enterprise architecture and coherency management. Therefore is alignment of IT both a science and an art form.
The Coherency Architect 