Linking strategy, governance, and performance in software engineering

Applying IT in an appropriate and timely way, in harmony with strategies, goals and needs, is important for business performance success. However, because ensuring that IT will support the achievement of business strategies entails a sequence of key decisions in a variety of related IT areas, knowledge that is relevant for effective decision-making tends to be dispersed among multiple business and IT stakeholders, who represent an organisation's diverse and conflicting interests. Consequently, inappropriately assigning decision rights for critical IT decisions increases the risk of misalignment. We study the context in which decision rights are managed as part of governance in software development for business process support so that organisations can achieve high-level alignment between software systems and business processes during software development. In this paper we establish the key components of a system for governance design that links software development governance arrangements, business strategy and performance. We position business process executives and managers as roles responsible for software development governance. Their responsibilities include defining the software system's strategic aims, providing the leadership to put them into effect, and satisfying themselves that an appropriate governance structure is, and remains in place during software development. We also position business process and software developer stakeholders as roles responsible for implementing software systems that help realise strategic aims. We propose four key software development decisions: functional and non-functional requirements, and system architecture and deliverables.