Business/IT Projects Alignment through the Project Portfolio Approval Process as IT Governance Instrument

In this paper, we present the result of the alignment between the strategic and tactical objectives for information technology at a public company, precisely a public university, through the approval process of Information Technologies (IT) project portfolio. The main contribution of this work is to demonstrate that the three IT governance mechanisms: alignment, communication and structures, when used properly, are irreplaceable means to produce the value that the board expects from IT. We also depict part of our IT governance framework which uses these three mechanisms, with special reference to the business/IT alignment.