Enterprise Architecture - MSc (Spring 2019)

Abstract

The goal of the course is to teach ‘Enterprise Architecture’, an recognised approach for understanding, managing, and developing the complex IT-infrastructure of large organisations.

Description

The course addresses several of the profound challenges of understanding and managing the complex IT-infra-structures of large organisations.

The course is held as a set of intensive modules containing mixed lectures, guest presentations, exercises and discussions.

Paper-writing supervision sessions are offered during the course.

Through gamification ("The EA Game", a digital simulation game) students will gain a deeper understanding of architecture processes with focus on architecture governance and management.

Several in-class group exercises throughout the course test the student's ability to turn theoretical concepts into practice, and sharpens their analytical skills towards EA cases. An example is a case exercise about architectural principles, which has a very clear learning point.

The course design deliberately challenges the students to reflect upon requisite variety in information gathering, both theoretically (by offering an abundance of supporting literature) and practically (by challenging their project proposals through supervision; by dialogical and dialectic open deliberations in class; and by requiring a mandatory reflective assignment).

The course provides a basic introduction to enterprise architecture (business and IT architecture) based on internationally recognised models, methods and frameworks. The course learning objectives follow Carnegie Mellon University's Enterprise Architecture Knowledge and Skills Areas (levels 1.0 and 2.0).

This course examines the overall enterprise architecture process from strategic planning to the specific architecture work in the areas of business architecture, information architecture, solution architecture and technical architecture.

The interplay between architecture process implementation and operational processes is discussed. Themes such as IT governance, performance management, bench-marking and ROI will be analysed from an architecture perspective. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and key concepts such as cloud and micro services will be examined at a strategic level. Course participants are also introduced to management of services and infrastructure, value-based development, and business process management (BPM).

The course will include a range of cases, including guest lectures.

Formal prerequisites

Intended learning outcomes

After the course, the student should be able to:

• Explain the background to and content of a number of key issues within enterprise architecture
• Explain and compare the essential concepts of enterprise architecture, including the framework and artefacts and their interdependencies
• Evaluate the architecture maturity, governance and strategy in an enterprise
• Search for more information, for example. scientific literature, reports, specifications, and use this information in methodology and argumentation
• Critically reflect on enterprise architecture as an approach to digital innovation and management