INN351 Enterprise Architecture for the Digital Age

Credits (ECTS):5

Course responsible:Andrea Carugati

Campus / Online:Taught campus Ås

Teaching language:Engelsk

Limits of class size:90

Course frequency:Annually

Nominal workload:125 hours

Teaching and exam period:Spring

About this course

The course takes the offset in the need of most organizations to deal with digital innovation and digital transformation. Whether digitalization is approached as an offensive move or a defensive action, its practical execution will depend on the foundation on which digitalization is built. This foundation is the architecture or the firm or enterprise architecture. This course takes a strategic and managerial approach to Enterprise Architecture. It considers the problem of Enterprise Architecture as a business, rather than a technical problem. A well-developed enterprise architecture enables business agility, integrated service offerings and more successful product innovations. The course clarifies that enterprise architecture is different from IT architecture and therefore it cannot be abdicated to the IT experts in organization but rather, it has to be deal with by the business in collaboration with IT. The course provides a theoretical foundation for and assists the students in obtaining a skill set for developing and implementing strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of Enterprise Architecture. The purpose is to enable the students to participate in the development and implementation of Enterprise Architecture in both private and public organizations

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

After completing the course, the participants will have knowledge of

  • The role of EA in enabling digital transformation
  • The role of EA in enabling business processes
  • The maturity phases of EA
  • The link between EA and IT architecture
  • EA commercial frameworks
  • EA governance

Skills:

After completing the course, the participants are able to use the concepts, theoretical frameworks, tools, and methods presented in this course to:

  • Participate in the development and implementation of the Operating model.
  • Participate in the development and implementation of Enterprise Architecture.
  • Analyze an organization and formulate architectural principles.
  • Participate in designing an architectural roadmap for an organization.
  • Evaluate and choose methods, models and tools to implement EA.
  • Enterprise Architecture modelling as consisting of: Business capability, process, data, and service modelling.
  • Design and evaluate the enterprise architecture governance of an organization

General competence:

  • Problem solving in groups
  • Clear and effective presentation in a written and oral form
  • A combination of methods will be utilized:

    Case discussions, Lectures, Group assignments, Contributions from external guest lecturers. Active participation is expected.

  • The students will receive feedback in connection with case discussion and mandatory assignments. The students will receive feedback and other learning support in connection with the lectures, mandatory assignments, and other occasions specified at the beginning of the course.
  • The course assumes a basic understanding of the functioning of organizations and the information systems. This includes an understanding of organizational structures, organizational stakeholders, business processes and how IT supports business processes.
  • The course will be evaluated with a portfolio assessment based on two group projects where the first project accounts for 40% and the final project 60% of the final grade (A-F).

    A retake exam is not organized in this course. Those who do not pass need to take the whole course.

  • External examiner will control the quality of syllabus, questions for the final examination, and principles for the assessment of the examination answers.
  • One mandatory activity (approved/ not-approved) in groups and/ or individually. These activity may require active participation in the lectures (e.g., presentations/ workshops) and/ or written assignments. The instructions about the mandatory activities will be given at the course start. The students will be organized in groups at the beginning of the course. Active participation in the group work is compulsory to pass the course. Practical information about the group work (including deadlines for joining the groups) will be given at the start of the course when the number of participants is fixed. The mandatory assignments are valid only for one semester, i.e., if a student wishes to retake the course, the mandatory activities also need to be retaken.
  • The course is in English. Incoming students can contact student advisors at the School of Economics and Business (studieveileder-hh@nmbu.no) for admission to the course.
  • Letter grades
  • The course is intended for students enrolled in master programmes at NMBU. It is also open for exchange students and other students with sufficient prior knowledge.