Analysis, Modeling and Design in IS

• Enseignant(s): C.Legner
• Titre en français: Analyse, modèles et design en systèmes d'information
• Cours donné en: anglais
• Crédits ECTS: 6 crédits
• Horaire: Semestre de printemps 2011-2012, 4.0h. de cours (moyenne hebdomadaire)
•  séances
•  site web du cours
• Formation concernée: Maîtrise universitaire ès Sciences en systèmes d'information

Objectifs

Companies face several challenges in IT planning and design: On the one hand, they wnat to leverage technology innovations (e.g., mobile technologies or cloud computing), which significantly change the way business applications are implemented and deployed. On the other hand, the complexity of corporate IT landscapes has been steadily growing, and keeping pace with an ever-changing business and technology environment is often difficult. In response, architectural considerations have become a key concern for today's IT departments.

This course introduces students to the systematic planning and architecting of enterprise-wide, mission-critical, highly distributed information systems. It will provide the foundational knowledge needed for analyzing, modeling and designing information systems, based on enterprise architecture concepts.

Upon completion, students will be able to

• understand the importance of architecture thinking in information systems planning and implementation,
• analyze and document an enterprise in its current and target state from an integrated business and technology perspective.
• systematically capture and model business requirements and translate them into appropriate architecture models describing the IT solutions. 
• apply enterprise architecture concepts and practices for developing the application, data and integration architecture.

Students will apply their knowledge in case studies and modeling exercises. Guest lectures will provide in-depth insights into the approaches taken by leading companies. Case studies and guest lectures will cover examples from different industries (financial services, manufacturing, retail) and illustrate different architecture paradigms (packaged software vs. software development).

Contenus

The course is structured in three parts:

The first part will provide a motivation for architecture thinking in IT planning and design.  

The second part of the course focusses on the objectives, concepts and practices of enterprise architecture management. Students will familiarize with contemporary enterprise architecture models and frameworks, such as the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architectures or The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF).  Based thereon, the fundamentals of modelling the different layers of the enterprise architecture will be presented, namely business, process, application, data, integration and infrastructure layer. Students will apply and compare different modeling notations (ArchiMate, BPMN, UML).

The third part will apply enterprise architecture concepts and practices  to typical business problems:

1. Analyzing the business requirements and environment of the firm (based on business, operational and capability models)
2. Redesigning and implementing business processes (business process maps and models)
3. Business requirements analysis and solution design in software development projects vs. packaged software implementations
4. Planning the future application landscape (application architecture)
5. Identifying the key information objects and managing enterprise-wide master data (data architecture)
6. Introducing a service-oriented architecture (SOA-based integration architecture)

This course is given in English, however French-speaking students can ask questions and will be answered in French.

Références

Class materials (copies of slides, exercices, and relevant readings) will be posted on the Moodle class website:

http://moodle.unil.ch/user/index.php?contextid=197453

The following sources provide an introduction to the topic:

• Ross, J., Weill, P., Robertson, D. (2005): Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Harvard Business Press
• Lankhorst et al. (2005): Enterprise Architecture at Work – Modelling, Communication and Analysis, Springer
• Ahlemann, F., Stettiner, E., Messerschmidt, M., Legner, C. (2012): Strategic Enterprise Architecture Management: Best Practices, Current Challenges and Future Development, Springer  

Evaluation

1ère tentative

Examen:

Ecrit 2h00 heures

Documentation:

Autorisée avec restrictions

Calculatrice:

Non autorisée

Evaluation:

The evaluation is based on two mandatory assignments during the semester (40%), class participation (20%) and an exam at the end of the semester (40%).

The mandatory assignments will comprise a presentation on enterprise architecture frameworks (assignment 1, due in March) and the stepwise development of as-is and to-be architecture models for the ALMIKA case (assignment 2, from March to May).

Rattrapage

Examen:

Ecrit 2h00 heures

Documentation:

Autorisée avec restrictions

Calculatrice:

Non autorisée

Evaluation:

In case of reexamination, the grades obtained in the assignments and class participation stay valid.