Abstract
Having an IT strategy has long been an established way of controlling IT within a company and ensuring alignment between IT and business. In more recent years the notion of IT governance has also emerged as an important issue for the already busy manager.
By examining what we are trying to achieve by formulating an IT strategy or designing out IT governance, we can better understand how these different tools are used, and can be used, to contribute to the business goals of the company.
This chapter looks at both IT strategies and IT governance from an outcome-oriented point of view. A simple model is constructed to help illustrate how these concepts relate to each other and to what really matters, the execution of business processes.