TDT4252/DT8802 Exam 2013
Guidelines to answers
1. Enterprise Architecture: 1 (a)
•
Strategic Intention
– Create an architectural vision for the enterprise architecture project and the enterprise as a
whole. Includes creating a common understanding and identifying a common requirements
vision (e.g. Gartner), and creating high level business requirements (e.g. TOGAF).
•
Business Architecture
– Here, the focus is on the business terms. Create the product and/or service strategy, identify
the baseline business arhitecture and define the future business architecture and identify the
gaps between them.
•
InformationArchitecture
– Here, the focus is on the information. Identify major sources of information necessary to
support the business architecture. Identify the baseline information arhitecture and define the
future information architecture and identify the gaps between them.
•
Technical Architecture
– Here, the focus is on the information. Identify the technology and the technological services
that will form the basis of the implementation of technology. Define the infrastructure
necessary to support proposed new architecture.
•
Portfolio Management
– Management and governance of the enterprise architecture endeavour by identifying major
implementation projects, prioritising them, evaluating business opportunities associated with
them.
1 (b) – types of roles
• Strategic Intention
– CEO or top management
• Business Architecture
– Business Manager
• InformationArchitecture
– CIO or IT Manager
• Technical Architecture
– CIO or IT Manager
• Portfolio Management
– Both business and IT manager
• Note these are clearly explained in the case study in the paper by
Sessions.
1 (c)
• Examples of support for reuse of knowledge
and best practices:
– A taxonomy of models or types of information to
be considered. E.g. Zachman Framework.
– Reference models such as Technical Reference
model in TOGAF & FEA, Business, Service
Component, Data and Performance Reference
models in FEA.
– Standards Information database in TOGAF
Question 2: Stakeholders and
Requirements Modelling. 2 (a)
•
Human Activity Modelling
– Aim: to understand the activities done by the humans.
– Activities: Identify the goals of the human activities, the resources required and the actions
involved in the activities.
•
System Goal Modelling
– Aim: to understand the system context and the boundaries between the human activity and
the system. An understanding of the stakeholders' requirements from the system perspective.
– Activities: identify the context, the system actors and their dependencies, input to scenarios
and requirements management.
•
Use case modelling
– Aim: to acquire the requirements from stakeholders that are complete, precise and testable.
– Activities: create use case diagrams using input from the i* models and use case descriptions.
•
Requirements management
– Aim: to collect and structure all the requirements, ensure that they are categorised so that
they can be tested.
– Activities: requirements management activities as stated In the aims of this activity.
2 (b) – types of models
• Human Activity Modelling
– Stakeholder model, structured descriptions of
actitivties, perhaps high-level activity models.
• System Goal Modelling
– Goal model, i* models (SD and SR models).
• Use case modelling
– Use case models and descriptions (UML)
• Requirements management
– Requirements models
2(c) . Example of a metamodel
High-level
actvity models
Goals (i*)
Stakeholders
Requirements
Use cases
Systems model
Question 3: Interoperability
3 (a)
• Definition:
– Interoperability is a property of a product or system,
whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with
other products or systems, present or future, without any
restricted access or implementation.
– The ability of two or more systems or components to
exchange information and to use the information that has
been exchanged (IEEE).
• Examples: When 2 companies (e.g. a manufacturer and
a supplier) need to share some information, when the
doctor sends information to the hospital about a
patient, or writes a prescription to a patient that
should be used by the pharmacy.
3 (b) – 3 types of interoperability
•
Syntactic Interoperability:
– If two or more systems are capable of communicating and exchanging data, they are exhibiting
syntactic interoperability. Specified data formats, communication protocols and the like are
fundamental. XML or SQL standards are among the tools of syntactic interoperability.
– Example: if the data about a patient from the GP is received correctly at the pharmacy, e.g.
date of birth.
•
Semantic Interoperability:
– The ability to automatically interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately
in order to produce useful results as defined by the end users of both systems. To achieve
semantic interoperability, both sides must refer to a common information exchange reference
model.
– Example: if the data: date of birth can be interpreted as date of birth at the pharmacy.
•
Business Interoperability:
– The ability for diverse business processes to work together
– Example: if the pharmacy is able to operate appropriately on the date of birth or other
information received to conduct their work such as process the e-prescription and serve the
patient.
Question 4: Enterprise Modelling and
Enterprise Reference Architectures
• 4 (a) An Enterprise Reference Architecture (ERA)
provides a framework for modelling and integrating
enterprises whereas an enterprise architecture (EA)
provides guidance to bridging the business and IT
strategy of an enterprise. (ERA addresses the lifecycle
of an enterprise. EA does not address the lifecycle
issue, but considers an enterprise in a current or a
future state, to move forward from one state to
another.)
• 4 (b) main characteristics: addresses the lifecycle of an
enterprise, identifies the different types of models in
an enterprise, highlights the human as well as the
technological aspects of an enterprise.
4 (c) generic concepts in GERAM
•
GERA defines the enterprise related generic concepts recommended for use in
enterprise engineering and integration projects. These concepts can be
categorised as:
•
a) Human oriented concepts
–
to describe the role of humans as an integral part of the organisation and operation of an enterprise.
–
to support humans during enterprise design, construction and change.
•
b) Process oriented concepts for the description of the business processes of the
enterprise;
•
c) Technology oriented concepts for the description of the business process
supporting technology involved in both enterprise operation and enterprise
engineering efforts (modelling and model use support).
4 (d)
High-level
actvity
models
Goals (i*)
Stakeholde
rs
Use cases
Systems
model
•
•
•
Requireme
nts
• Question 2 is
about a sociotechnical
system, which
by definition
involves
humans and
technology.
Human oriented: stakeholders, human actvity and the interaction between the human and the
technology.
Technology oriented: System goals, use cases as seen from a system's perspective, requirements
from the system.
Process oriented: Not as obvious as the others. However, the observation of the human activity
gives an insight into the processes to be supported by the system and the resources required by the
processes.