Enterprise Architecture - MSc (Spring 2020)

Abstract

The goal of the course is to teach ‘Enterprise Architecture’, a recognised approach for understanding, managing, and developing a practice, which analyses areas of common activity within or between organisations, where information and other resources are exchanged to guide future states from an integrated viewpoint of strategy, business, and technology.

Description

The course addresses several challenges of understanding and managing complex IT infrastructures within large organisations.

The course is held as a set of weekly modules containing mixed lectures and  guest presentations  and subsequent exercises and discussions. Some of the modules designated for exercises are used for paper-writing supervision sessions.

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 students' ability to turn theoretical concepts into practice, and sharpen their analytical skills towards EA cases.

The course design challenges the students to reflect upon the variety in information gathering, both theoretically (by offering an abundance of supporting literature) and practically (by challenging their research question through supervision; and by dialogical and dialectic open deliberations in class).

The course provides a basic introduction to enterprise architecture  based on internationally recognised models, methods and frameworks.

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.

Formal prerequisites

Basic business and technology courses.

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 artifacts 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.

Learning activities

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 research question through supervision; by dialogical and dialectic open deliberations in class).

Course literature

The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.

Student Activity Budget

Estimated distribution of learning activities for the typical student

• Preparation for lectures and exercises: 30%
• Lectures: 20%
• Exercises: 20%
• Project work, supervision included: 30%

Ordinary exam

Exam type:
C: Submission of written work, external (7-trinsskala)
Exam variation:
CG: Submission of written work for groups.

Time and date