Enterprise engineering has recently emerged as a new discipline to address the intensifiedcomplexity and dynamics of the evolving enterprise by designing, aligning, and governing itsdevelopment. Enterprise designers employ various approaches, frameworks, andmethodologies to design and align various components in the enterprise. This paper takes acloser look at alignment between the business and IT components of an enterprise, and theneed for a theoretical backing when combining multiple approaches during enterprisedesign. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a ‘method artefact’. Themethod artefact applies an existing model, called the business-IT alignment model, and isuseful to enterprise designers when they need to enhance an existing business-IT alignmentapproach. As an additional contribution, the paper emphasises the role of an emergingresearch methodology, called ‘design research’, in developing the new method artefact.The paper demonstrates the use of the method artefact by enhancing the ‘foundation forexecution’ approach with an element from the ‘essence of operation’ approach, andconcludes with opportunities for further research.
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