Abstract:

There are many frameworks and methodologies to develop an IT architecture for an organization, the currently best known IT architecture methodology being TOGAF. However, these frameworks and methodologies are intended for use by IT professionals and IT consultants, people with a considerable experience in IT architecture. They are also quite elaborate, making it difficult to teach them at an undergraduate or even graduate level in a business education program, where students have neither the background nor the experience of senior business architects or senior IT consultants.

In this paper we present a simplified methodology to develop an IT architecture. The presented methodology is suited for teaching in a business curriculum, at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. We describe the methodology (activities, deliverables, participant roles) and show how it is related to the existing, more complex IT architecture methodologies. We also show why the presented methodology is suited for teaching. It simplifies complex tasks and relates them to a simple architecture framework for IT systems, presented in previous research. We present different versions of the methodology, suited for teaching at the undergraduate and at the graduate level, the graduate level putting higher demands on conceptualization and analytic skills.
Finally, we report our experiences with the teaching of this IT architecture methodology at the Hogeschool-Universiteit at Brussels. We also describe a number of case studies, actively used in teaching the presented methodology.

Keywords:

IT architecture, IT methodology.