How can organizations ensure alignment between IT services and business goals?

Engaging stakeholders in service design and management processes is crucial for ensuring alignment between IT services and business goals. By involving stakeholders, organizations can gather diverse perspectives and insights, which helps to identify the needs, priorities, and expectations of different business units. This collaboration fosters an environment where IT services can be tailored to meet actual business requirements, leading to enhanced value creation and improved service delivery.

In addition, stakeholder engagement allows for better communication and understanding between IT and business teams. It ensures that any changes or new services introduced are directly linked to achieving business objectives, ultimately creating a more cohesive strategy. When stakeholders from various functions collaborate, they can identify gaps and opportunities, ensuring that IT initiatives align with the broader organizational strategy.

The other approaches described in the other options would lead to a disconnect between IT services and the overall business strategy. Isolating IT service teams from business discussions can cause teams to work in silos, which could result in delivering services that do not meet users' or organizational needs. Similarly, focusing only on technical specifications or determining IT goals without consulting the business would fail to address the business's actual requirements and might lead to wasted resources or lack of adoption.