Architecture Alignment

As we have described in Chap. 1, achieving alignment between business and IT is one of the most important drivers for architecture. Architecture alignment is the problem of designing architectures at the infrastructure, application, and business levels such that each fits optimally with the other architectures. By studying project documentation obtained in case studies in several large Dutch organisations, we have tried to find alignment patterns that are actually used in practice. These results provide the context in which architectures are designed. Insight into this context helps the reader in better applying the techniques presented in this book.