Course content

The course focuses on the role that information systems have in an organizational context, both internally in organizations, and where the organizations are involved in digital ecosystems and other collaborative constellations. The course goal is to enable course participants to tackle challenges connected to midterm or long-term development, e.g. quality and process improvements, business and IT alignment, organizational structure development and strategic development and innovation processes. A principal introduction to system life cycle phases will be given, with main focus on system design, from conceptual design to production.

Course themes are as follows, but not limited to:

• Systems engineering for planning, analyzing, and design of systems.
• How Enterprise Modeling (EM) helps: Adoption of EM, Business/IT-alignment
• Terms, Concepts and Tools within EM and Systems Engineering
• Management of complex projects. Project Organization and Roles; Need for New Mindsets for Success
• Core Competencies in Relation to EM project activities, i.e. developing visions and strategy, design/redesign of the business, development of information systems.
• Quality and basic principles of modeling, with a special focus on the 4EM Method being a representative of the Scandinavian strand of EM methods.
• The Structure of Patterns and the Concept of Pattern Language
• Selected EM Approaches
• Enterprise Architecture Frameworks and Reference Architectures; The Zachman Framework, GERAM and TOGAF
• Sustainability and how environmental aspects can be integrated into system design.
• Outlook and further technical aspects

Learning outcome

Upon completion of the course, students will be expected to have established theoretical insights into the various topics presented in the course and be able to analyze and model organizational situations. The candidate shall have established practical skills that can increase the understanding of the design of IT systems and expand the perspectives that computer system models provide. Special insight will be gained into a method for Enterprise Modeling (EM) being a representative of the Scandinavian strand of EM methods sharing many underlying principles of the so-called multi-perspective approaches that recommend the analysis of organizational problems from several perspectives, such as vision (goals, objective), data (concepts, attributes), business processes (processes, tasks, activities), organizational structure (actors, roles, organizational units), etc. The candidate should be able to put the course into a broader context in relation to the impact of information systems in society.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures and case studies; real-life examples from a variety of sectors. Other supporting material (video, text, etc.) may be used.

Compulsory assignments

• Assignments

Further on evaluation

Oral exam based on the obligatory assignments and course content.

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

Background knowledge in how an enterprise functions, and the basics of modeling in general is recommended. Basic modeling knowledge, like how to develop an information model, is recommendable since abstracting the most important aspects from reality in order to capture these aspects in a model is also at the heart of EM.

Course materials

The course material will be taken from different books and papers. Main course textbooks:

Sandkuhl, K., Stirna, J., Persson, A, Wiβotzki, M. Enterprise Modeling - Tackling Business Challenges with the 4EM Method. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg. 10.1007/978-3-662-43725-4.pdf (springer.com).

Kossiakoff, Alexander, Biemer, Steven M., Seymour, Samuel J., Flanigan, David A. (2020): Systems Engineering Principles and Practice (Wiley Series in Systems Engineering and Management) 3rd Edition

A specification of reading materials and tutorials will be announced at the beginning of the course.