IT Management is a complex task. On the one hand, it requires knowledge of IT infrastructure in order to design the IT portfolio in accordance with business objectives. On the other hand, it requires management instruments that effectively support aligning IT processes to goals and metrics. For this purpose, there is a need for concepts that support abstracting from technical details and focusing on those aspects of IT that are relevant for the business. To support the analysis and evaluation of IT systems, these concepts should include critical success factors and key performance indicators. At the same time, the multitude of interdependencies require graphics, to assist in visualizing complex structures and navigating effectively through IT landscapes and corresponding processes, as well as to further documents that may be scattered throughout a company’s IT system.

This project is aimed at developing a domain-specific modelling language (DSL), called “Enterprise IT Management Modelling Language” (EITM-ML). It serves to create models of IT landscapes, which are integrated with models of business processes or enterprise models in general. These models not only foster decision making directly, but also serve as a conceptual foundation for the corresponding software to support IT management – with special emphasis on what are termed dashboards. The dashboard metaphor emphasizes the focus on those concepts that are relevant for specific IT management scenarios and omit other potential distractions.