Semester 3

Enterprise Architecture and IS Urbanization

In the 80's J. Zachman's created its seminal Information Systems (IS) Architecture Framework, later transformed in the Zachman Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework. The goal was to deal with a number of organisational and IS issues such as, IS rigidity, poor communication between stakeholders, lack of interoperability of enterprise systems, or difficulty to develop a comprehensive picture of the whole enterprise organisation.

EA has greatly evolved since Zachman's seminal Framework. On the industry side, the main motivations for using EA frameworks (such as Sasoon's, Longépé's, or Contini's in France, or TOGAF, or EAF abroad) have evolved. They include nowadays: improving business alignment, delivering road maps for enterprise and IS evolution, value modelling and measurement, managing projects portfolio, or separating concerns and modularizing enterprise systems architecture. On the research side, new innovative approaches have emerged to tackle the many different EA issues. These approaches were developed in many different domains such as Enterprise Modelling, Requirements Engineering, Ontology Engineering, Method Engineering as well as Ubiquitous Computing or Service based Systems Engineering. Some of these approaches are already entering into daily practice, others are still theoretical but show high potential for impacting practice very soon.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with fundamental and practical knowledge and know-how of Enterprise Architecture. To achieve this, the course will start with a theoretical discussion of architecture in the large, a study of the most critical aforementioned issues tackled by EA, and a review of the main aspects of the approaches available to deal with EA issues.

The course is organized as follows :

• A comparative study of the main EA frameworks (Sasoon, Contini, Longépé for France EA, and Zachman, EAF, and TOGAF for international EA),
• Review of best practices from academy and industry, and
• Use real life case studies, in particular to experiment the application of the theoretical concepts and industrial approaches presented during the course.

Decisional Systems

Decision making is a key issue in today enterprises and the role that decision centric information systems can play is of paramount importance. This course aims to get students knowledgeable about decision information systems, their role in supporting decision making and methods to develop them. The course introduces three levels of decision making, namely the operational level, the managerial level and the strategic level and discusses their characteristics and impacts on requirements for the supporting information system.The course focuses on the strategic level and its impact on data that originate from internal as well as external sources and shall be integrated in a single data warehouse. It presents a design method for developing a data warehouse. The external data acquisition makes it possible to approach the topic of competitive intelligence. The students will understand how to design a data warehouse according to the objectives to fulfil, in which cases it is required (a) to create a star model and how to design the fields and (b) to prefer a snowflake model where dimensions are standardized in order to support complex queries. Another way to design a data warehouse is un-modelling an On-Line Transaction Processing system. It means creating metrics and accepting data’s redundancies.

The course is organized as follows :

• Introduction to the three decision levels and corresponding information systems.
• Designing a data warehouse: the Kimball’s 6 steps method, snowflake model, star model.
• Online transaction processing, management information system, executive information system, decision support system.

Entreprise Knowledge Modelling and Management

The goal of this course is to provide a deep understanding of the modelling and management issues faced when dealing with Knowledge Systems. The objective is twofold:

• To address the representation of knowledge that a given enterprise wishes to develop about its ways-of-working and the role that its information system plays to support those. There are two hypotheses underlying such a representation: it shall be done at different but connected layers and it should include different perspectives along which knowledge is captured. The proposed set of models aims to represent the enterprise at each of those layers and along each perspective and to understand and reason about the conditions of their alignment or misalignment.
• To introduce notions underlying knowledge management and to discuss a number of issues such as: What are knowledge structures? Are there typical processes to create and transform knowledge? How organizations can achieve creation, capitalization and reuse of knowledge.

The course is organized as follows :

• Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) Framework: organisation of enterprise models into three layers (enterprise objectives – business processes - IT services) and five perspectives (objectives, roles/activities, roles/actors, business rules and objects), relationships between models (vertical ones through layers and horizontal ones between perspectives of modelling)
• Change Management Modelling (CMM): A Framework and a method to handle organisational change.
• Intention driven modelling of the enterprise knowledge: the MAP modelling formalism.
• Knowledge management: dynamicity of knowledge in social networks, memories and knowledge, systems which can process knowledge, reuse of knowledge.
• Challenging issues for IKS: Individual vs. collective knowledge, tacit vs. explicit knowledge, Nonaka’s theory of knowledge creation, and human networks for identifying, creating and transforming knowledge networks.

Data Mining and Knowledge Extraction

This course aims at training students to Data Mining techniques in order to respond to the following question: how to acquire knowledge from data coming either from the internal of the enterprise or from external sources.. The increasing volume of data (a) created by organizational processes, (b) found on the Web and (c) from business partners’ databases, implies automatic extraction techniques of knowledge from these multiples sources of data. Data Mining contributes to this problem by supporting the discovery of hidden patterns among a mass of data The knowledge obtained through the use of Data mining techniques supports tactical decision making in organizations as well as strategic decision making. It also becomes necessary to assist the decision making process with tools. The course aims to cover that perspective as well.

The course is organized as follows :

• Why and for what purpose enterprises use Data Mining techniques? For example, what kind of marketing approach could increase sales or how to perform credit approval efficiently?
• Data Mining techniques state-of-the art
• Management of a data mining project : how to choose the accurate data mining technique: segmentation which makes possible to discover populations with homogeneous behavior or supervised mode which confirms an intuition?
• The multi-layer Perceptron concept, the use of regression line and decision tree. The course includes practical exercises and small data mining projects.

Requirements Engineering

A number of surveys tend to show that IT engineers are able to develop technically sound information systems but encounter difficulties to design systems that meet the needs of their users. The challenge of requirements engineering is to contribute to the development of purposeful systems, i.e. aligned to the organisation strategy and objectives. Requirements Engineering (RE) aims at abstracting from the wishes, expectations, objectives and needs of a user community the requirements specification of the information system that shall support them. RE is mainly concerned by the Why and What questions: during the RE activity it is necessary to understand Why a system needs to be developed and What the system shall do. The hope behind modelling the Why dimension is to develop systems better fitting the needs of their users and the expectations of the organisation stakeholders. Modelling the Why is also important in a changing world in order to provide the conceptual link between the system and its environment. The course presents the state of the art in Requirements Engineering and develops approaches supporting requirements elicitation, specification, validation and negotiation. It includes presentations of innovative research approaches and discussions on RE challenges.

The course is organized as follows :

• Introduction to RE, justifications for RE and state-of-the art survey. The notion of a requirement, requirements specification and documentation.
• Approaches to requirements elicitation : Goal driven RE – Scenario based RE and goal/scenario approaches
• Requirements negotiation and prioritisation
• The RE process and supporting tools

Service Oriented Systems and Interoperability

The purpose of this course is to present the state-of-the-art in SOA (Service oriented architecture) and SOE (service oriented engineering) and to address interoperability issues both from a technical viewpoint and from a conceptual and design view point. The course also presents advanced views on SOA and SOE using approaches currently developed in research.

There are a large number of services based technologies available on the market that use different definitions of the concept of service and aim to support the development of different types of services based systems. The course presents for each service view, the existing technologies and architectures and discuss their comparative advantages and limitations. It also presents different approaches to interoperate systems. Finally, the course takes a research stand to (a) introduce a business centric view of services and their mapping to software services following a MDD approach and (b) discuss how service technologies can support the publication and reuse of method components seen as method services (MaaS).

The course is organized as follows :

• Service Oriented Architecture(SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS), various view points on services: web services, interactive-based services, context-aware services, mobile service,
• Web service technologies: WSRP, practical use, impacts and limitations
• Service Oriented Engineering (SOE): architectural patterns & best practices to implement web-services oriented systems; the Mashup model and its use.
• Interoperability issues and solutions; Enterprise Service Bus (ESB): concepts and features
• Advanced SOA : ISOA (Intentional Service Architecture) and Maas (Method as a Service)

Systems Dynamics

System Dynamics is a science that includes a method and conceptual tools to analyse systems in which there are loops between causes and effects. System dynamics is therefore, an appropriate methodology for studying and managing complex feedback systems. The goal of the System Dynamics course is to teach students how to create tools to solve complex business or organisational issues thanks to their understanding of feedback loops behaviour.

This course is divided into two parts:

• History of System Dynamics focuses on the basics of the method, presentations of complex models from various fields (production, management, economy, ecology…); show students how to understand simulation tools, feedback loops and causal analysis.
• Principles for modelling complex dynamic systems are introduced in small group workshops to help students create their own model and improve their understanding of a complex problem.

Organisation Strategy and Business Processes

The objective of this course is to provide students with a better understanding of the concepts, models and tools related to information strategy and management, including business processes. The course is organized in three parts. The first part aimed at understanding a method useful in designing strategic information systems plans. The second part shifts the focus from IS strategic planning to IS auditing and evaluation. Finally, the last part explores the role of business processes and discusses techniques devoted to business process reengineering.

The course is organized as follows :

• Introduction: building and managing IS strategic plans: (a) Information systems, organizations, management and strategy, (b) Information systems and business strategy
• Auditing and evaluation of information systems: (a) IS auditing concepts, (b) Standard IS audit approach and COBIT
• Business processes: (a)Business process modelling, (b)Business process reengineering
• Other ERP related issues: Enterprise Application Integration, Business Intelligence, Service Oriented Architecture, Information System flexibility, Product Lifecycle Management.

Semester 4

ERP system

The goal of this course is to provide a deep understanding of the specific engineering issues faced when dealing with Enterprise resource Planning (ERP) systems. The lecture will deal with two particular facets of ERP engineering: (a) designing ERPs, and (b) selecting and customizing ERPs. At the end of the course, students shall be able to point out the specific characteristics of ERP systems and their differences with other kinds of IS components, elaborate a sound discussion on the specific benefits and risks of ERPs in various contexts, put into practice advanced engineering techniques for designing ERP-like systems, selecting ERPs, and specifying ERP customization requirements.

The course is organized as follows :

• Introduction to ERPs: definition, history, differences with other kinds of IS components, benefits and drawbacks, current market and trends.
• Designing ERPs: specific architecture characteristics of ERPs and fundamental engineering issues. Advanced techniques for designing the repository, transactions and processes. Illustration with SAP Production Planning.
• Customizing ERP: challenges and key success factors of ERP projects, main goals and fundamental engineering issues of ERP customization, comparative review of ERP management methods used in industry, advanced requirements engineering techniques for selecting ERPs and for customizing ERPs. Case studies.
• Other ERP related issues: Enterprise Application Integration, Business Intelligence, Service Oriented Architecture, Information System flexibility, Product Lifecycle Management.

Systems and Method Engineering Environments

As information systems are becoming more and more complex and diverse, the usage of methods to control and manage their development is crucial. The use of specific software tools (CASE) is a necessary supplement to these methods. This change in method requirements and scope implies however, rethinking the traditional concept of method and the usual ways to constructing them. Method Engineering (ME) is a new field aiming at the systematic construction of a method according to a set of specific requirements by reusing and assembling method components extracted from exiting methods and made available in a repository. Complementarily, Computer Aided Method Engineering tools (CAME) have appeared on the market to supplement method engineering, to help in designing method repositories and in providing transformation and code generation facilities. The main subject of this course is to present to students the state of the art knowledge on these topics, to develop their critical skills concerning methods and the way we build and implement them into software tools.

The course is organized as follows :

• Method engineering: IS engineering vs. method engineering, method engineering framework, modelling and meta-modelling as a means to formalise methods, product and process meta-modelling and meta-meta modelling, method component representation and assembly techniques supporting method construction
• CASE tools usage and design: state of the art concerning CASE tools, meta-modelling and reference framework for tool and method engineering, design and specification of an experimental repository for the Entity/Relationship model,
• Meta-CASE tools technology: comparative presentation of CASE and Meta-CASE technologies, application and method practice of the MetaEdit+ environment

IKS Governance and Quality Assurance

IKS project management and governance is a topic of paramount importance in industry. Quality assurance is an integral part of those. The objective of this course is twofold (a) to provide students with knowledge on the most advanced techniques and methods for IKS project engineering and management and (b) to providing students with the bases of quality management and its practice in organisations.

(a) The first part of the course highlights the duality between IS engineering and project engineering and argues that is it necessary to balance their relative importance. It reviews advanced techniques for both IS engineering and project engineering and discusses their correlation. The view put forward is that of an IKS project seen as a social entity and project engineering seen as a set of processes and methods to defining, organizing and making this complex entity work. The course emphasises the need to adapt processes and methods to the project situation at hand, to the organisational context and to the organisation strategy. It insists on the fact that a successful project ensures the alignment of the IKS system to the organisation strategy and business.

Organisation is as follows:

• Presentation and comparative analysis of IKS and project engineering highlighting their differences and complementarities.
• IS engineering methods: Comparative panorama of various types of IS engineering approaches and their relationships with kinds of enterprises and types of IKS. Time will be devoted to engineering methods dealing with the evolution of an IS still in operation.
• Project engineering: Presentation of the most recent approaches to define and structure activities, roles and skills and to organize actions in order to bring the project to success: Product structuring and impact on project organization (PBS); Resources organization and impact on delays and product quality (OBS); Tasks organization & planning and impact on project planning and budget

We will use real project cases in order to illustrate the lecture content.

(b) The second part of his course aims to provide students with a sound basis for professional practice of quality management and to broaden the scope to handling complex crisis situations. Quality will be looked upon according two perspectives: the hard one that is dealing with products, deliverables, tests and indicators and the soft one that is concerned with intuitive evaluation of situations, organizations and people. A system-centred definition based on a colour metaphor is introduced to help assessing quality in embedded networks of interactions. Quality is also studied from an intent view point to enable quality reasoning in crisis and/or uncertain situations.

Organisation is as follows:

• Several definitions of quality: production, process, piloting and its objects: product, service and concept.
• Tests and management of IT services: ITIL (information Technology Infrastructure Library), SLA (Service Level Agreement) and Quality of Service.
• Development processes: ISO 9000,CMMi (Capability Maturity Model), SPICE (Software Programming Information Capability Determination or ISO 15504)
• Quality evaluation of meetings, presentations and arguments: the pedagogical arch uniting empirics and deduction.
• Quality extended to the company: EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management), leadership, decision-making processes, organizations, cultures.