Supporting alignment of IT-infrastructure and IT-strategy: the balanced scorecard based IT strategycard approach

“Translating strategy into action” is common practice in today’s enterprises and usually based on strategy formulation, strategy implementation and implementation measurement processes. Aligning the IT-Infrastructure with the business strategy has become an important objective in this context, as information technology is still considered as a key technology for short innovation cycles in rapidly changing markets. In modern businesses it is expected that Information Technology contributes significantly to the success of the company. To make this contribution transparent and measurable and in order to support alignment with the business strategy, a complex target system and indicator system was developed at Deutsche Bahn – the IT Strategy Card. The IT Strategy Card is based on the Balanced Scorecard approach and reflects Deutsche Bahn’s IT objectives in more than 300 sub-targets and more than 250 indicators. This document outlines the development process of the IT Strategy Card, the conceptual basis, the target and indicator system itself as well as the collective experiences. One significant experience is that not only is the system suited for measuring the achievement of goals, it is also a resource in the continuing development of the company IT Strategy.