Reaching Business Alignment

Following the first chapter explaining the problems information systems globally face and the second one on the general theory of industrialization, it’s time for some actual battle-proved methods! Though we will not get our hands on the code or deploy software before Part 2 of the book, this third chapter is much more applied and will show the principle of what is called business/IT alignment. The idea behind this principle is that the software system should reflect the structure of the business domain it aims to automate as much as possible. In a way, this is applying Conway’s law (which will be explained) backward, using it to obtain the desired result. In practice, it is important to know the map to rule on the ground, so we will be using an information system mapping technique based on the four-layer diagram pushed forward by CIGREF (short for Club Informatique des Grandes Entreprises Françaises), among other organizations.

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