Validating strategic alignment of organizational IT requirements using goal modeling and problem diagrams

Ensuring that organizational IT is in alignment with and provides support for an organization’s business strategy is critical to business success. We present an integrated approach to requirements engineering for organizational IT. To help validate IT-business strategy alignment, we propose a single model according to Jackson’s problem diagram framework to encompass both business strategy and system requirements. We use an organizational strategy analysis technique to deconstruct business strategy. Strategy is then modeled using a goal-oriented requirements engineering notation; a framework for modeling an organization’s business strategy proposed by the Business Rules Group is used to construct the goal model. We use Jackson’s context diagrams to represent both business and IT domain context. Our approach is illustrated via application to an exemplar, constructed from a variety of sources in the literature describing Seven–Eleven Japan.