Enterprise Architecture 2012-2013

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

 

Assignment 1

 The objective of this assignment is to get acquainted with the Enterprise Architecture Modeling techniques by elaborating the various diagrams.

You will have to do this according to the following steps.

A.     Finding an organization for enterprise modeling

For this assignment you will need to find an organization where you can create the EAM models. The organization can be in the public, semi-public or private sectors. It must be a non-trivial organization of at least about 30 employees with a departmental structure with well distinguishable business functions. A representative of the organization must be willing to be interviewed for about two hours in order to create the EAM. Furthermore, they must express a need for an advice on a current Enterprise Architecture theme, that you will elaborate in Assignment 2. The company may be in any part of the world, and is not restricted to be located in the Netherlands.

An invitation letter signed by Sjaak Brinkkemper is available here.

You must email the following information to Karl Werder (K.Werder@students.uu.nl) before 23 November 17.00 hrs.:

·         the name of the organization,

·         their website,

·         the name of the contact person,

·         and a short justification of fulfilling the requirements above.

B. Description of the enterprise

Make an interesting description of your enterprise taking your fellow students as model reader. Include aspects as the products, services, markets, locations, headquarters, number of employees, turnover and profit/loss, growth, mission, vision, strategy, history and crucial changes. We appreciate a logo (in GIF/JPEG).
You may also add pictures, photographs, schemas, organization charts, and the like, as long as this supports the explanation of the enterprise and is related to enterprise architecture.
This description should be between 2 and 4 pages A4 (including pictures).

C. EAM models

All models should be properly explained with text, so make sure the text clarifies the models and is consistent with the models. You don't need to make the text into a one to one transformation of the model, but be sure that all the major graphical parts of each of the models are addressed in the text and include some examples.

The diagrams should be created using Visio (use the templates in BSCW both for Visio and Word).
Check your diagrams against the modeling rules as explained in the lecture presentations.
The EAM models comprise the following:

  1. Supply Chain diagram at the Corporate level (inter-enterprise variant). An SCD at the intra-enterprise level may be required for those groups where the focus is on a business unit.
  2. Enterprise Function diagram at Corporate level.
  3. At least two (2) Enterprise Function diagrams at Functional level.
  4. Four (4) essential Scenario overlays on the Enterprise Function diagrams of B2 and B3.
  5. An application overlay on the Enterprise Function diagram (either at Corporate level or Functional level, depending on which is the most interesting).
  6. System Infrastructure diagram of the complete enterprise. If this gets too complicated it could be restricted to the Enterprise Functions chosen in B3.
  7. Interesting models of your enterprise may be included for the sake of illustration. See the confidentiality clause below.

Guidelines
Please take the following general guidelines into consideration.

Notice of originality
We declare this paper is our own work and that information derived from published or unpublished work of others has been acknowledged in the text and has been explicitly referred to in the list of references.
All citations in the text are between quotation marks (" ") .

Signed:

Name:

 


Date:

Place:

(End of Notice of originality)

Please note that copying or paraphrasing information without referencing it properly will be considered as an act of fraud or plagiarism!

 

Assignment 2

The objective of this assignment is to write

  1. either a self contained paper about a current architectural theme in Enterprise Architecture (literature study); or
  2. a consultancy report on a current architectural theme related to the Enterprise Architecture of your company.

See below for more information on architectural themes.

We prefer consultancy reports, but then of course, the company should be willing to participate in providing a consultancy question and relevant information.

Especially in the case of a consultancy report, it will be necessary to refer to your first paper. But also with a literature study, examples or concrete descriptions in the paper may be related to the company your first assignment was based upon.

Nevertheless, try to keep your second paper as self-contained as possible, i.e. it should be possible to understand this second paper without relying too much on your first paper.

If you write for a specific reader profile, e.g. enterprise architects or middle management, try to address their problems and needs.

In writing the second paper you should stick to the following general structure of the paper.

1. Executive summary (only for the consultancy reports)

This section contains a relative short abstract of the problem and the solution(s).

2. Introduction

This section describes the general purpose of the paper, its scope and limitations, the main question and requirements (in case of a consultancy report), and its structure. It may include acknowledgements.

2 - n <<The body of your report>>

This is the main part of the paper and probably will be subdivided into a number of sections (so n is probably 5 or 6) and subsections.

Especially for the consultancy report, think of background, scope, approach, one or more propositions for solutions, consequences of the solutions (think of the organization, people, money etc.) and a comparison of the different propositions.

For the literature study, there are no solution related sections, but your subdivision will depend on the specific architectural theme. You might include a general perspective on the theme and a perspective from a specific company.

n+1. Conclusion

Here you describe the most important results obtained from your investigation. For the consultancy report, you also give the recommendations.

7. References

A consultancy report is not a scientific paper, so in this case don't use too many references, as it may hamper readibility. However, a limited number of references is fine.

For a literature study, there is not such a restriction on the number of references; or rather, you should have not too few references.

When you make a reference in the text, use references (e.g. (Bayer02)) both in the text where the reference is made, as well as at the end where the actual paper is mentioned; e.g.
Bayer02  J. Bayer and R. Kolb. Architecture Patterns for Product Families. Technical Report, No. 085.02/E, Fraunhofer IESE, September 2002.)
Ratnasingam03a) Ratnasingam, P., Tan, Y.-H. (2003, June 9-11). Institutional Trust Related EDI Lessons for eMarketplaces. Proceedings of the 16th Bled eCommerce Conference, Bled, Slovenia, 275-285.
Ratnasingam03b) Ratnasingam, P., Sheppard, B. H., Shermand, D. M. (2003). The grammars of trust: a model and general implications. Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 422-437.
Martin91 Martin, J. (1991). Rapid Application Development. New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company.

You may also make use of APA, see for instance CITATONS AND REFERENCES IN A.P.A. STYLE. But there are many other sites on APA.

Architectural themes
As mentioned above, we prefer a consultancy report related to an architectural theme. To give you an idea about current architectural themes, see the list below. Note however that it's not a must for a company to pick a theme from that list. We only require that the theme is architectural in nature. So for instance a consultancy question like "How satisfied are our clients?" will not qualify.

  1. agility of the architecture;
  2. application integration;
  3. business-IT alignment;
  4. costs and benefits of (developing and maintaining) an enterprise architecture;
  5. enterprise architecture and security issues;
  6. enterprise development: how to act with mergers etc.;
  7. governance;
  8. legacy systems;
  9. model driven architecture;
  10. outsourcing;
  11. rationalisation of the application portfolio;
  12. role of the architect;
  13. service-oriented architecture;
  14. the use of standard software.

Guidelines
Please take the following general guidelines into consideration.

Notice of originality
We declare that this paper is our own work and that information derived from published or unpublished work of others has been acknowledged in the text and has been explicitly referred to in the list of references.
All citations in the text are between quotation marks (" ") .

Signed:

Name:

 


Date:

Place: