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Measuring and Improving Information Systems Agility Through the
Balanced Scorecard Approach
Yassine Rdiouat1, Samir Bahsani2, Mouhsine Lakhdissi3 and Alami Semma4
1 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Techniques, Hassan 1 University,
Settat, Morocco
2 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Techniques, Hassan 1 University,
Settat, Morocco
3 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Techniques, Hassan 1 University,
Settat, Morocco
4 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Techniques, Hassan 1 University,
Settat, Morocco
Abstract
Facing an environment increasingly complex, uncertain and
changing, even in crisis, organizations are driven to be agile in
order to survive. Agility, at the core heart of business strategy,
represents the ability to grow in a competitive environment of
continuous and unpredictable changes with information systems
perceived as one of its main enablers. In other words, to be agile,
organizations must be able to rely on agile enterprise information
systems/information technology (IT/IS). Since, the agility needs
are not the same among stakeholders, the objective of this
research is to develop a conceptual model for the achievement
and assessment of IT/IS agility from balanced perspectives to
support agile organizations. Several researches have indicated
that the IT balanced scorecard (BSC) approach is an appropriate
technique for evaluating IT performance. This paper provides a
balanced-scorecard based framework to evaluate the IS agility
through four perspectives: business contribution, user
orientation, operation excellence and innovation and
competitiveness. The proposed framework, called IS Agility BSC,
propose a three layer structure for each of the four perspectives:
mission, key success factors, and agility evaluation criteria.
According to this conceptual model, enterprise information
systems agility is measured according to 14 agility key success
factors, over the four BSC perspectives, using 42 agility
evaluation criteria that are identified based on literature survey
methodology.
This paper explores agility in the broader context of the
enterprise information systems. The findings will provide, for
both researchers and practitioners, a practical approach for
achieving and measuring IS agility performance to support
organizations in attempt to become agile as a new condition of
surviving in the new business world.
Keywords: Agility, Agile Information Systems, Agile Enterprise
Information systems, IT agility, IS agility, Agile Manufacturing.
Agile Enterprise, Agile Organization, Agile BSC, Balanced
Scorecard.
1. Introduction
Enterprise information systems have become the backbone
of organizations, supporting most of their business
operations and procedures and often aligned with their
business strategy. Since information technology/systems
get more complex, enabling new transformations and new
forms of work never experienced before such as big data,
cloud computing, mobile applications or digital enterprise,
quick developments in information systems assessment are
crucial to support the company’s competitiveness [82].
The increasing unpredictable, dynamic and turbulent
environments stress the need for organizations to
implement agility as a strategic approach to support the
changing business conditions [85].
The concept of agility is being promoted as the solution to
give organizations the ability of surviving in a competitive
environment of continuous and unpredictable change by
reacting quickly and effectively to changing markets,
driven by customer-defined products and services [35].
Enterprise information systems are regarded as enablers
and facilitators for organizations to be agile [14][59][36]
[67], making imperative the definition of an adequate
framework for the achievement and the assessment of
enterprise information systems agility. Many researches
about IS agility concept have been conducted at the
meantime. However, there remains no common
understanding of defining the information systems to
support the concept of agility, so a deep understanding of
the concept is required to design assessment models of
information systems that satisfy the changing needs of
organizations.
Most of previous literature explored the IS agility from
specific IS area like IT infrastructure agility (e.g. [64];
[106]; [3]), or agile software engineering and agile project
management [1][75]. Organizations seeking agility
through IS need to consider IS in a broader context as an
integrated system for a better fusion between IT and
business. The effective contribution of IS, in agile context,
cannot be achieved without a better meeting of the
balanced expectations of all its stakeholders, this will
result in the IS ability to (1) continuously innovate,
maintain the competitiveness in the changing environment
(2) mobilize internal processes and structures to take
advantage of future opportunities (3) satisfy and maintain
an agile relationship with users (4) generate IT business
value with quicker speed to market.
Measuring IT agility performance should be a key concern
of business and IT executives as it supports the
justification of future IT investments and demonstrates the
effectiveness and added business value of IT. Most of the
literature addresses the IS agility measurement in silos
without a comprehensive evaluation framework of Agile
information systems (AIS) as a general function within the
organization. To develop such a comprehensive
framework, IT balanced scorecard (IT BSC) is a practical
methodology, known by both researcher and practitioners,
as performance measurement system. This approach is
adopted in this paper to evaluate IS agility in four
perspectives: business contribution, user orientation,
operation excellence and innovation and competitiveness.
In other hand, the literature survey methodology is
adopted to identify IT agility key success factors (BSC
objectives) and their evaluation criteria (BSC metrics) for
each scorecard perspective. Combining these two
methodologies helps (i) to give guidelines for achieving IT
agility, and (ii) creates a solid foundation for an
assessment framework of IT Agility in the organization,
called IS Agility BSC. The objective is not to concentrate
on a on a specific IS area, but to evaluate agility in the
broader context of the IS as a critical function in the whole
organization.
To set the context, IS agility and balanced scorecard
concepts will first be discussed. After that, a balanced
scorecard will be introduced as a performance
measurement system for IS agility supporting agile
organizations to improve their business strategies.
2. Research methodology
The Balanced Scorecard is a popular methodology for
effective performance measurement that can be applied to
IT [95]. Building on IT BSC framework, this approach is
adopted in this paper to evaluate IS agility in four
perspectives: business contribution, user orientation,
operation excellence and innovation and competitiveness.
In other hand, the literature survey methodology is
adopted to identify IT agility key success factors (BSC
objectives) and their evaluation criteria (BSC metrics) for
each scorecard perspective. Regarding Rockart [75b], the
key success factors, also called critical success factor
(CSF), are defined as "The limited number of areas in
which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure
successful competitive performance for the organization.
Critical Success Factors are strongly related to the mission
and strategic goals of your business or project. Whereas
the mission and goals focus on the aims and what is to be
achieved, Critical Success Factors focus on the most
important areas and get to the very heart of both what is to
be achieved and how you will achieve it.
The research methodology adopted in this paper is the
combination of IT BSC and literature review approaches.
The objective is to build a scorecard for IS agility based
on the following steps, as showed in (Fig.1):
1. Literature survey on both IT agility measurement and
BSC framework applications
2. Identification of IT BSC as an approach for IT agility
assessment
3. Identification of the four BSC perspectives
4. Definition of the mission of each perspective
5. For each mission, identifying key success factors by
answering the question “what internal or external
area of organization is essential to achieve this
mission?”
6. Purification of key success factors by eliminating
those judged less important or synonymous. As we
identify and evaluate candidate CSF, we may
uncover some new strategic area of IT agility. So we
may need to review mission and CSFs iteratively.
7. Identification of quantitative and qualitative criteria,
based on the literature review of the most relevant
agility attributes, to evaluate FCS. The determination
of new criteria may lead to review the corresponding
CSF and criteria iteratively.
Fig. 1 Research methodology
LiteratureresearchonIT
a
g
ilit
y
measurement
LiteratureresearchonBSC
a
pp
lications
IdentificationofITBSCasan
a
pp
roachforITa
g
ilit
y
assessment
ITBalancedscorecard
LiteraturereviewofITagility
measurementand
ISagilityBSCdevelopment
Pers
p
ectives
Missions
Keysuccess²factors
Evaluationcriteria
3. The concept of agility
The term of “agility” gained wider recognition since the
publication of the Iacocca Institute (Lehigh University,
USA) report’s entitled 21st Century Manufacturing
Enterprise Strategy [32]. In this report, agility was
described as a new industrial order for competitiveness in
a volatile manufacturing marketplace. Kidd [45] defined
agility as a rapid and proactive adaptation of enterprise
elements to unexpected and unpredicted changes.
Goldman et al. [31] proposed that agility is the successful
application of competitive bases such as speed, flexibility,
innovation, and quality by the means of the integration of
reconfigurable resources and best practices of knowledge-
rich environment to provide customer-driven products and
services in a fast changing environment. According to
Jackson and Johansson [40] agility is not a goal in itself
but the necessary means to maintain the competitiveness in
the market characterized by uncertainty and changes. In
such environments, companies need to be agile – they
need to be able to capitalize on or respond to the
opportunities created by new market situations faster than
their competitors [31].
The concept of agility has also applied to IS research field.
eg. Agile Information Systems Development [4][39][91]
or Agile project management [63][25]. Other area are
explored, such as, IT infrastructure, IS development, IS
organization, and IS personnel as described by Salmela et
al [80] in a recent literature review. However, research has
shown that neither a widely accepted definition nor
commonly used frameworks or concepts exist.
Enterprise information systems are regarded as an enabler
for business (enterprise) agility achievement. According to
Lui and Piccoli [59] agile information systems enables the
firm to identify needed changes in the information
processing functionalities required to succeed in the new
environment, and which lends itself to the quick and
efficient implementation of the needed changes. Agility on
the information systems layer applies when changes in
information systems are required, due to (external) agility
requirements from business. Indeed, given the huge
budgets for IT, the top management wants to ensure that
IS agility is a key success factor to accomplish business
objectives and sustain the business agility. A recent
surveys reveal that the main concerns for top executives
are business-IT alignment, business agility, business cost
reduction, IT-cost reduction; speed to market in that order
[54][55][56][66][5]. An important moderating factor in the
relationship between IT capabilities and business agility is
business-IT alignment [57]58][77]. It is defined as ‘the
extent to which the IT mission, objectives, and plans
support, and are supported by, the organization’s mission,
objectives, and plans [79]. This alignment creates an
integrated organization in which every function, unit, and
person are focused on the organization's competitiveness
[102]. As agility is the concern of the whole organization,
IT agility has to be achieved and evaluated in alignment
with the enterprise strategies and respecting the needs of
the stakeholders of information systems.
4. IS Agility measurement-related works
Few researchers have contributed approaches for
measuring agility. According to Tsourveloudis et al [93],
agility metrics are difficult to define in general, mainly due
to the multidimensionality and vagueness of the concept of
agility itself. The works on IS agility measurement concern
basically the evaluation of:
1. Agile enterprise with information systems is a major
component and enabler [93] [104] [105] [108] [21]
[30] [107]
2. Agile information systems of specific-domains, such
as, e-government information systems agility [33]
3. Information systems sub-functions agility, such as,
information systems development (ISD) agility [34]
or Business Intelligence (BI) systems agility [46].
4. Agile enterprise information systems [50] [59]
Agile enterprise with IS is a major enabler
Tsourveloudis et al. [93] proposed a fuzzy logic-based
framework to evaluate the agility of manufacturing
information systems. In this framework, the agility is
evaluated according to the four infrastructures of the
manufacturing system: i. production ii. market, iii. people,
and iv. information. These infrastructures are combined
with their corresponding operational parameters to
determine the overall agility of the system. Then, the
assessment of agility is based on an approximate reasoning
method taking into account the knowledge that is included
in the fuzzy IF-THEN rules.
Sakthivel et al. [104] and Vinodh et al. [105] designed an
agility assessment model consisting of three levels. The
first level consisted of five agility enablers such as
management responsibility agility, manufacturing
management agility, workforce agility, technology agility
and manufacturing strategy agility. The second level
includes agility criteria and the third level includes agile
attributes. This model was used to assess the agility of a
firm using scorer model; validation was done using multi-
grade fuzzy approach.
Nicola et al. [21] presented a technique for the strategic
management of the chain addressing supply planning and
allowing the improvement of the Manufacturing Supply
Chain (MSC) agility in terms of ability in reconfiguration
to meet performance.
Another different approach was proposed by Yauch et al.
[108]. They proposed a quantitative index of agility, based
on a conceptualization of agility as a performance
outcome, which captures both the success of an
organization and the turbulence of its business
environment. This model integrates operational measures
and external parameters to determine the agility of the any
type of manufacturing organization.
Ganguly et al. [30] defined three metrics to measure
responsiveness, market share and cost effectiveness which
would help in measuring a company’s agility. They
proposed the use of their method along with fuzzy logic
approach proposed by Yang et al. [107] in order to arrive
at a conclusion regarding the level of agility of any
corporate enterprise.
Agile information systems of specific-domains:
Gong et al. [33] proposed four principles for creating
agility in e-government information systems -particularly
in BPM (Business Process Management) systems: i.
formulating the business process using business services,
ii. integrating and orchestrating business services, iii.
separating process, knowledge and resource; and iv.
implementing policy by collaboration. Then, based on
scenarios derived from the case study, the authors evaluate
the level of agility using a set of quantitative and
qualitative measures that are defined for each one of the
four principles.
Information systems sub-functions agility:
In their prospects of a quantitative measurement of agility,
Gren et al. [34] conducted a study to validate an agile
maturity measurement model of information systems
development (ISD) based on statistical tests and empirical
data. In this study, they selected to focus on the Sidky‘s
Agile Adoption Framework [88] which is divided into
agile levels, principles, practices and concepts, and
indicators. First, a pretest was conducted, in this work, as
a case study including a survey and focus group. Second,
the main study was conducted with 45 employees from
two SAP customers in the US. They used internal
consistency (by a Cronbach’s alpha) as the main measure
for reliability and analyzed construct validity by
exploratory principal factor analysis (PFA).
Knabke et al. [46] identified agile criteria from IS
literature that can be applied to BI system as a major
component of information system. They proposed a
framework of agility properties categorized into
dimensions to provide a valid foundation to evaluate
whether a BI system is agile or not. The dimensions
obtained are: change behavior, perceived customer value,
time, process, model, approach, technology and
environment. Each dimension is subdivided into attributes
derived from the relevant literature.
Agile enterprise information systems:
Lui and Piccoli [59] proposed a framework to evaluate the
agility of information systems from the socio-technical
perspective. The information system is considered as
composed of two sub-systems: a technical system and a
social system. The technical sub-system encompasses both
technology and process. The social sub-system
encompasses the people who are directly involved in the
IS and reporting the structure in which, these people are
embedded. To measure the information system agility
using the socio-technical perspective, Lui and Piccoli used
the agility of the four components: i. technology agility,
ii.process agility, iii. people agility, and iv. structure
agility. The authors argued that, the overall agility of the
system is not a simple summing of the obtained scores of
agility in these four components, but it depends on their
nonlinear relationships. To this end, the authors used the
fuzzy logic membership functions to evaluate agility.
Kumar et al. [50] developed an empirically derived
framework for better understanding and managing IS
flexibility using grounded theory and content analysis. A
process model for managing flexibility is presented; it
includes steps for understanding contextual factors,
recognizing reasons why flexibility is important,
evaluating what needs to be flexible, identifying flexibility
categories and stakeholders, diagnosing types of flexibility
needed, understanding synergies and tradeoffs between
them, and prescribing strategies for proactively managing
IS flexibility. Three major flexibility categories, flexibility
in IS operations, flexibility in IS systems & services
development and deployment, and flexibility in IS
management, containing 10 IS flexibility types are
identified and described.
Although all these works are important, they are either
theoretical or address partially the IS agility. Moreover,
the agility needs are not the same among IS stakeholders;
this aspect needs further investigations supporting a
broader range of decision making on evaluating and
improving IS agility. Our approach focuses on studying IS
agility in an integrated manner considering different
aspects of agility in order to meet and balance
stockholders expectations using BSC approach. We do not
limit ourselves to the IT infrastructure, or software
systems, but explore agility in the context of enterprise
information systems as a critical function within the whole
organization for a better fusion between IT and business.
5. Balanced Scorecard Approach
The BSC is a performance measurement approach,
introduced at the enterprise level [42] since 1992 by
Kaplan and Norton, it allows managers to look at their
business performance from four performance perspectives
(financial, internal processes, customer and innovation and
learning). The fundamental premise of the BSC
framework is to integrate all the interests of key
stakeholders (e.g., executives, IT managers, Business
unit’s managers, customers, employees, etc.) on a
scorecard. The term “balanced” reflects the balance
provided between short-and long-term objectives, between
quantitative and qualitative performance measures, and
between different perspectives. For this balanced
measurement framework, Kaplan and Norton proposed a
three layer structure for each of the four perspectives:
mission, objectives, and measures. Each perspective can
be explained by a key question with which it is associated.
The answers to each key question become the objectives
associated with that perspective, and performance is then
judged by the progress to achieving these objectives [12].
There is an explicit causal relationship between the
perspectives: good performance in the innovation and
learning objectives generally drives improvements in the
internal business process objectives, which should
improve the organization in the eyes of the customer,
which ultimately leads to improved financial results.
According to Van Grembergen & De Haes [22] each of
these perspectives has to be translated into the
corresponding metrics and measures that assess the current
situation. These assessments should be repeated
periodically and have to be confronted with the objectives
that have to be fixed in advance [53].
BSC can be applied to IT as initially described by Van
Grembergen et al. [98] [98] [100]. The adaptations made
by these authors generated a generic scorecard for IT
known in the literature as IT BSC. The success of the BSC
in IT is due to its flexible design and comprehensive
nature. By adding or altering individual measures and
perspectives, the BSC can be tailored to suit the strategy
of any organization [28]. Moreover, a cascade of BSCs
can be used across multiple organizational levels
supporting strategic alignment [96] [65].
Due to its easy adaptability, several issues have been
addressed by using the IT BSC framework, such as,
evaluating IT projects [8], evaluate IT departments
performance [51], evaluating Information Systems (IS)
performance [76], prevent sub-optimization of IT
performance [7], ensuring strategic alignment between IT
and the business [97], integration of business and IT
governance [10], and others.
6. Developing an IT Agile Balanced Scorecard
It was demonstrated previously that the BSC concept can
be applied to IT. This paper suggests that the BSC has the
potential to help organizations evaluate their IT/IS Agility,
in a holistic manner, through the process of measuring and
analyzing induced performance improvement.
To apply this approach to the IT Agility, the four
perspectives of the generic IT BSC should be changed
accordingly. In (Fig. 2), a generic IT BSC is shown [96].
Fig. 2 Generic IT Balanced Scorecard.
The user orientation perspective represents the user
evaluation of IT. The operational excellence perspective
represents the IT processes employed to develop and
deliver the applications. The future orientation perspective
represents the human and technology resources needed by
IT to deliver its services over time. The business
contribution perspective captures the business value
created from the IT investments.
Based on the literature review and according to the generic
IT BSC, the four perspectives of IT/IS agility BSC are
built (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3 IT/IS Agility scorecard perspectives and their cause-and-effect
Relationships
Business contribution perspective evaluates the IT agility
from the viewpoints of executive management. It captures
the business value created by the IT agility, as enabler of
business agility, and investigates the link between IT agile
implementation and associated tangible and intangible
benefits experienced by the organization [89]. Moreover,
different studies conducted to explore if and how IT
capabilities contribute to higher levels of business (Or
enterprise) agility performance [81][106][15]. Cap Gemini
[17] has found in a survey among 300 CIOs and other IT
executives worldwide that all organizations with high
perceived business agility also scored high on IT/IS
agility, and 93% of CIOs agree that business value is
created by IT agility. Hence, we define the mission of this
perspective as the ability to obtain a reasonable business
contribution from IT agility with quicker speed to market.
The IT BSC Framework evaluates user orientation
perspective from the viewpoints of internal business users,
however, regarding the emergence of digital links between
the company and its customers including e-business and
social networks, the technical objects that provides IT
department become directly visible to the customer.
Hence, the IS becomes a direct actor in customer
relationship. This involves a new requirement of the IS
function on the customer experience, the ergonomics and
the quality of service. Therefore, the user orientation
perspective of IS agility BSC evaluates the IT agility from
a broader viewpoints of IS users including customer (end
user), partners, in addition to internal business users. It
answers the question "How do stakeholders view the
agility of the IT department?" This perspective is based
largely on the IS ability to initiate and maintain an agile
relationship with its clients and partners, including internal
business users, based on core principles such as, user
partnership built on collaboration, sharing, transparency
and trust, tailor-made products, cost optimization, service
quality, technical support, responsiveness to change and
user satisfaction. Then, we can deduce that the mission of
this perspective is to "Satisfy users, initiate and maintain
an agile relationship with them."
The operational excellence perspective answers the key
question “How agile are the processes and structures of IT
department to deliver applications and services in order to
satisfy the stockholders?” Therefore, the mission is “To
ensure IT processes and structures agility to deliver value-
added applications and services”
The innovation and competitiveness perspective is adapted
from the ‘innovation and learning’ perspective of the BSC.
It shows the agility of IT from the viewpoint of the IT
organization itself, and answers the key question “How
well is IT positioned to innovate and provide more
competitive advantages?” According to [89], this
perspective is focusing on the long-term achievement of
the organization goals and how the newly implemented
technology creates competitive advantages in the future
e.g., potential for global co-operation, enhancing
organizational image, and attracting more sophisticated
clients. This perspective is perhaps the most difficult to
quantify but has the greatest potential to provide the
necessary means to preserve IS agility. Competitiveness is
representative of management’s ability to instill the
necessary cultural change to embrace innovative
technology. Employees with the ability to adapt to an
ever-changing work environment will be more receptive to
new IT/IS applications, which improve operational
efficiency. Hence, the mission is “To provide the
necessary means to innovate and maintain the enterprise
competitiveness in the changing environment”
A cause-and-effect relationship must be defined
throughout the whole scorecard. As shown in (Fig. 3), the
four perspectives have amongst each other cause-and-
effect relationships. Over all, effective agility drivers like
better education of IT staff (innovation and
competitiveness) is an enabler (performance driver) for a
better and faster developed applications (operational
excellence perspective) that in turn is an enabler for
measuring up user expectations (user orientation
perspective) that eventually will enhance higher business
value of IT and more business agility (business
contribution).
Consequently, IT agility can be achieved through a
continuous improvement approach, based on the ability of
AIS to (1) continuously innovate, maintain the
competitiveness in the changing environment (2) mobilize
internal processes and structures to take advantage of
future opportunities (3) satisfy and maintain an agile
relationship with users (4) generate IT business value with
quicker speed to market.
7. Key success factors and evaluation criteria
for IS Agility BSC
The objectives of the IS Agility BSC represents the key
success factors of IT agility to achieve the mission of each
perspective. These objectives are built based on IT BSC
framework and literature review as showed in (Table 1).
The metrics refers to the evaluation criteria based on the
objectives can be assessed. This paragraph discusses
furthermore both key success factors and evaluation
criteria of the proposed IS Agility BSC framework.
Table 1: IT/IS scorecard key success factors
Perspectives Key success factors References
Business
contribution
Value delivery Adapted from IT
BSC [95][96]
Speed to market [55] [56] [66][5]
Business-IT alignment Adapted from IT
BSC [95][96]
IT cost reduction [55] [56] [66][5]
Adapted from IT
BSC [95][96]
User orientation
Speed to response [2] [83]
Quality improvement [2] [109]
Partnership with users [9] [57] [58]
[70] [103]
Cost effectiveness [2] [81] [85]
Operational
excellence
Operational processes
agility
[109]
Adapted from IT
BSC [95]
Development processes
agility Adapted from IT
BSC [95]
Structures agility [109]; Adapted
from IT BSC
[95][96]
Innovation
and
competitiveness
Human resources agility [59][109]
Technology agility
Innovation [81][109]
Business contribution perspective:
The main concern of the agility is the strategic business-IT
alignment. It is logic that the IS Agility BSC starts with
the business contribution perspective. The IS Agility BSC
showed in (Fig. 3 and Table 1) links with business through
the business contribution perspective (business/IT
alignment, value delivery, IT cost reduction and Speed to
Market). The main measurement challenge is within the
area of strategic alignment. Some criteria are used by
Grembergen [95]:
• Business goals supported by IT goals
• Operational plan/budget approval
The value delivery means delivering value and solutions to
the customer, rather than products, in order to bring
product to the market as rapidly as possible [28]. It can be
directly measured against the objectives of the overall
business. Traditional financial evaluations can be used for
the assessment of the value delivery, such as the return on
investment (ROI), net present value (NPV), internal rate of
return (IRR) and payback period (PB). On another side,
the business value can be created with innovation when it
is reflected in high value-added products and services.
Indeed, regarding Jack Welch, CEO from General
Electric, “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the
rate of change on the inside, then the end is near”.
Moreover, in Schumpeter’s theory, innovation is the
source of value creation. Schumpeterian innovation
emphasizes the importance of technology and considers
novel combinations of resources (and the services they
provide) as the foundations of new products and
production methods. These, in turn, lead to the
transformation of markets and industries, hence to
economic development [7b]. Thus, in this paper, we
introduced “Business value based on IT innovation” as a
new criterion to evaluate the value created by IT based on
the exploitations of new business opportunities generated
by IT innovation witch is in the heart of IT agility.
IT cost reduction is a traditional financial objective and is
measured through the attainment of expense and recovery
targets. The expenses refer to the costs that the IT
organization has made for the business, and the recovery
refers to the allocation of costs to IT services and the
internal charge back to the business [96].
Speed to market is vital for business growth in today’s
competitive economy, especially as organizations continue
to increase their use of IT for competitive advantage [54].
It is defined as the time it takes to recognize a market
opportunity, translate this into a product or service and
bring it to the market [18]. This can be assessed trough the
“Time to Market of new products or services introduction”
[85]. Other objectives related to the same concepts such as
delivery speed [2] remain in the operational level. These
will be discussed in the user orientation perspective.
Table 2: Evaluation criteria of business contribution perspective
Key factors Criteria References
Value delivery
Business value of major
IT projects Adapted from IT
BSC [95][96]
Business value based on
IT innovation New
Speed to
market
New products
introduction vs.
competition
Adapted from
[110]
[42]
Strategic
business-IT
alignment
Business goals supported
by IT goals Adapted from IT
BSC [95][96]
Operational plan/budget
approval
IT cost
reduction Attainment of expense
and recovery targets
User orientation perspective:
The challenge for IT department is how to serve and
satisfy the maximum our users? This perspective provides
answers to the key questions of these stakeholders
concerning IT agility to meet business expectations, and
maintain an agile relationship with customers and partners.
Regarding Norton and Kaplan [42], customer’s concerns,
at the enterprise level, tend to fall into four categories:
time, quality, performance and service, and cost. In the
same way, Agarwal [2] formulated more detailed agile
attributes (customer satisfaction, quality improvement,
cost minimization, delivery speed, new product
introduction, service level improvement, lead-time
reduction). As shown in (Table 3), the issues this
perspective focuses on are the basic performance
objectives, which the user expects, of speed to response,
quality improvement, and partnership with users. Speed to
response or Time agility [83] is the capability of an
organization to rapidly execute decision making,
operational cycles and reconfiguration of corporate
structures [68]. At the heart of agility concept, many
researchers consider the time and speed dimension as an
intrinsic concept for agility achievement. In this paper we
consider Speed to response as the time it takes to respond
to user needs (time it takes to response to customer
demand, time to deliver new products…). Nevertheless,
Time is also synonym of quickness [85] which is on the
main agility capabilities that will be used as evaluation
criteria through the IT agility scorecard. Speed to response
is relevant and can be assessed by various criteria, such as:
• Delivery speed
• Speed to decision making
• Speed of data access
In the quality improvement area, several criteria can be
used, such as:
• Data transparency: represents the level of data quality
and availability to IS users. It refers, moreover, to the
level of alignment between business needs and IT
needs for data business intelligence [71].
• Products value addition
• Quality over product life
• User satisfaction
A major concern of business is the level of IT costs
effectiveness, which can be measured through criteria,
such as, attainment of unit cost targets and IT costs
charged back to the business unit [96]. Partnership
represents the level of alignment and relationship agility
between IT department and its users. This includes:
• Collaboration: represents the level of cooperation
between IT department and its users to enhance
competitiveness and allows responding to change than
following a plan [11] [26].
• Communication efficiency: refers to the level of
internal and external communication management
within the organization for faster decision-making [58]
• Trust based relationships: determines the level of trust
between the IT and its users.
Table 3: Evaluation criteria of user orientation perspective
Key factors Criteria References
Speed to
response
Delivery speed [2]
Speed of data access [11]
Speed to decision making [27]
Quality
improvement
Data transparency [71]
Products value addition [109]
Quality over product life
User satisfaction
Partnership
Collaboration [103] [9][11]
[86] [69]
Communications
efficiency [36]
Trust based relationships [20] [73] [101]
[38]
Cost
effectiveness
Attainment of unit cost
targets Adapted from
IT BSC [95]
[96]
IT costs charged back to
the business unit
Operational Excellence perspective:
As discussed in the previous paragraphs, operational
excellence perspective represents the agility of IT
processes and structures employed to develop and deliver
IT services and applications. This can mean offering a
wider variety of products and services in response to
changes, increasing customization and developing new
products and services. Moreover, information systems
must be able to make these changes quickly and at low
cost; it must therefore design agility into its operations and
services. In other words, IT department should enable the
operational agility to accomplish speed, accuracy, and cost
economy in the exploitation of innovation opportunities
[81]. The issues that are of focus here, as displayed in
(Table 1), are the agility performance of operational
process, development process and structures. The
operational process agility area answers key questions like
productivity, reliability of IT process and can be assessed
through several evaluation criteria as shown in (Table 4):
• Integrability: is mainly concerned with the integration
of IT/IS into the organization and the role it plays in
process co-ordination and integration of internal IS
components [89] [109].
• Responsiveness to change: is the process ability to
respond to changing conditions and customer
interactions as they occur.
• Flexibility: refers to the level of simplification and the
capability to rapidly change from one task or from one
production route to another, including the ability to
change from one situation to another [93].
• Setup times/costs: represents the level of process re-
configurability. According to Lui and Piccoli [59], this
criteria deals with the time and costs of setting up
alternative processes in the face of changes in demand,
market conditions, strategy, etc. For example, a
process is considered more agile when it can produce
different types of products and services without major
setup time and cost as demand changes.
• Performance evaluation of IT processes: deals with
process governance area of IT processes.
The development process agility area refers to measures
like level of productivity and quality of delivery from
clients developing their requirements for new capital
projects through the design to the final delivery and
maintenance of new products and services. This can be
assessed through criteria like:
• Customized products and services
• Short development cycle time
• First time right designs
• Continuous integration
Structures agility refers to “the degree of flexibility and
decision-making ability afforded to individual members of
the information system [59]. It can be evaluated trough
criteria, such as, leaderships or workforce empowerment,
distributed decision-making authority, and flatter
managerial hierarchies [93]. An empowered workforce,
and distributed decision-making authority allow
employees to take leadership in decision making and to
make it quickly. Flatter managerial hierarchies enhance
communication within the organization and speed up the
decision-making process in the face of more general and
strategic level changes. Eshlaghy et al. [29] identified 12
factors that have an effect on organizational agility by
applying path analysis. Interestingly, the most significant
are leadership, and organization commitment.
Organizational commitment refers to the extent to which
the employees of an organization see themselves as
belonging to the organization (or parts of it) and feel
attached to it [60] [94], a questionnaire in six language is
established by Kanning [41] for the validation of the
organizational commitment. Hence, as shown in (Table 4),
the selected evaluation criteria for this key success factor
are:
• Leadership
• Organization commitment
• Flatter managerial hierarchies
Table 4: Evaluation criteria of operational excellence perspective
Key factors Criteria References
Operational
processes
agility
Integrability [2][85][18][13]
[19][20][73]
Responsiveness to change [81[90]
Flexibility [31] [43] [44]
[23] [87]
Setup times/costs
Performance evaluation of
IT processes Adapted from IT
BSC [95]|
Development
process
agility
Customized products and
services [35] [45] [72]
[93]
Short development cycle
time [109]
First time right designs
Continuous integration [105b]
Structures
agility
Leadership [29]
Organization commitment
Flatter managerial
hierarchies [29] [93]
Innovation and competiveness:
It evaluates the agility from the viewpoints of IT
organization itself. The issues focused on, as depicted in
(Table 1), are Human resources agility, Technology agility
and Innovation. These three components are also the main
agility providers as described by Sharifi and Zhang [85].
Human resources agility is the degree to which
individuals, associated with the information systems,
possess knowledge and skills that are both varied and
easily redeployable in the face of change [59]. It can be
measured through criteria like training level and
education, Competency and adaptability as shown in
(Table 5). According to Goldman et al. [31], an agile
competitive environment is where the people skills,
knowledge, and experience are the main differentiators
between the companies.
Technology agility area represents the degree of flexibility
of the information technology and the extent to which the
IT components of the information system lends itself to
rapid adjustment when needed [59]. Some criteria can be
applied as showed in (Table 5).
Innovation is the successful exploration of new ideas for
products, services, procedures [84]. The main focus of the
IT department is to provide innovative technology to
enable development of new products and services
according the business orientations. Gurd [37] introduced
on his Agile BSC two criteria related to innovation
assessment, product innovation and process innovation
which represent the rate of improvements of existing
products and processes or the introduction of new ones.
Moreover, in their study on the IT impact on business
innovation, Aubert et al. [8b] distinguish six types of
innovations: commercial innovation, organizational
innovation, technological innovation, products innovation,
processes innovation and business model innovations.
However, innovation on purely IT aspects cannot be
finality in itself for IT department without generating
business value for the whole company. Especially as
today's information system exceeding its traditional
boundaries to position itself as a partner and a company's
growth driver. Thus, IT innovation, even irreproachable,
cannot be the unique purpose of IT teams. It only makes
sense by its actual use for business innovation, in other
words, when the IT becomes one of the innovation
sources, among many others, positively impacting the
business with its different forms. We can deduce through
this work a new IT agility evaluation criterion called
"Innovations with business value addition ". Some
evaluation criteria are shown in (Table 5) to evaluate
Innovation key success factor.
Table 5: Evaluation criteria of innovation and competitiveness
perspective
Key factors Criteria Reference
s
Human
resources
agility
Continuous training and
development [109]
Competency [6] [74]
[52] [62]
Adaptability
Technology
agility
Standardization [24] [15]
[78] [49]
[92]
Connectivity
Compatibility
Modularity
Scalability [48] [23]
Reconfigurability
Innovation
Technology awareness [37]
Customer-driven innovations
Innovations with business
value addition New
8. Map for IS Agility BSC
In order to ensure IS agility improvement, as a strategic
objective of the organization, our BSC, to be well-
developed, should have a card called "strategic map" to
evaluate and make visually explicit perspectives,
objectives and measures, and the main links between the
different perspectives of BSC through reports of cause and
effect as showed in (Fig. 3). An example of such cause-
effect is that the organization aims to sustainably improve
the Speed-to-Market (business contribution perspective).
To achieve this goal, the level of partnership and synergy
between business teams and IT team should rise, and all
business demands must be processed in time (user
orientation perspective). This also means that the agility of
operational processes and development processes should
be improved in order to respond quickly to changes, and
the internal structures must enhance more leadership to
accelerate the decision making process on one hand, and
on the other, the organization of the IT department is agile
enough for better collaboration internally and with
business users. The objectives of operational excellence
level can only be achieved if the information system
permanently improves its capacity for innovation and the
level of its technological advance, and whether the sense
of employee’s agility performs by learning, competency
and adaptability (perspective innovation and
competitiveness).
Fig. 3 Strategic map for IT/IS Agility scorecard
9. Conclusion and future work
Organizations are driven to be agile in order to survive
facing the business changing environments. Enterprise
information systems are regarded as the main enabler of
the organization agility in order to maintain competitive
advantages. Therefore, the achievement and evaluation of
IS agility is a strategic approach not only for the IT
department but for the whole organization. An important
conclusion of the paper is that IS agility can be achieved
through a continuous improvement approach, based on the
ability of AIS to (1) continuously innovate, maintain the
competitiveness in the changing environment (2) mobilize
internal processes and structures to take advantage of
future opportunities (3) satisfy and maintain an agile
relationship with users (4) generate IT business value with
quicker speed to market.. In this context, a framework
called IS Agility BSC is developed based on IT BSC
approach and the literature review on previous works on
IT agility manufacturing and assessment. The conceptual
model presented in this paper gives practical guidelines to
the achievement and the assessment of information
systems agility, through operational objectives with
evaluation criteria and over four balanced perspectives:
business contribution, user orientation, operational
excellence and innovation and competitiveness. The
framework presented in this work can be tested with the
help of suitable empirical and multiple case studies. As
next step, since the evaluation criteria contain both
tangible and intangible metrics, we aim to expand the
present work by an evaluation methodology, such as a
scoring model, in order to determine the IS agility level
with the help of appropriate empirical and case study
research. This work is intended to contribute to the theory-
building process in the fields of agility and information
systems.
The following are some of the major issues that could be
considered by researchers and practitioners:
• The conceptual model for agility evaluation could also
be extended to more key success factors and criteria
according to the business context, since no
organization is similar to another.
• IS Agility BSC must go beyond the IT department
level and must be integrated across the enterprise in
order to generate business value. This can be realized
through the development of a business agility balanced
scorecard to establish a linkage with IT Agility
balanced scorecards.
• Cascading IS Agility BSC to IT Units needs to be
defined, so, the objectives become more operational
and tactical, as do the performance measures. Indeed,
individual scorecards should be developed to link day-
to-day work with departmental goals and enterprise
vision.
• Investigating more the link between IT agility and IT
governance since IT agility is rarely measured as part
of IT governance.
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