Business and IT Design with SEAM: An Illustration with the PhD Hiring Process at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Companies seek to align their business with their IT. This alignment is important to maximize the return on their IT investment in their business. One major challenge is to develop models that can be understood by both business and IT stakeholders. Without such models, it is difficult for stakeholders to reach a shared understanding and to agree on what the issues and solutions are. We present a method called SEAM: it uses a systemic approach for representing business and IT organizations. With SEAM, stakeholders can quickly develop an understanding of the problem and gain knowledge on how to address it. This improves the success rate of business and IT projects.