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).