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EA - Imperial College London

Funded by the: JISC Flexible Service Delivery programme.

Lead Institution: Imperial College London.

Key Words: Enterprise Architecture (EA).

Our Enterprise Architecture (EA) journey

a story of impact and value

 

Background and institutional context

 

Institution: Imperial College London

 

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Division of Imperial College London has embarked upon using Enterprise Architecture (EA) to help align its IT service delivery with its business needs. EA has been embedded, as a change management suite of principles, across a number of projects, such as the adoption of common sign-on across academic and administrative systems. Architecture Principles and guidance for project teams have also been developed.


The department recognises the increasing need to be agile and flexible in its service delivery and to provide cost effective services to the College, especially in the current financial climate. It has recognised the importance of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Process Management and use of an agile approach in achieving this. It has embarked on a number of small strategic SOA projects to see how this approach may be useful in providing more flexible services. Like many HE Institutions it has a large number of applications from multiple vendors and there is increasing need to provide easy to use user interfaces which align with business processes that span multiple applications. SOA is seen as a way of enabling suitable easy to use access to such composite applications. Alongside this we have begun training on user interface design. The department is also working to improve the effectiveness and maturity of its governance structures within the College and gain support from staff for this architectural approach. 

 

Objective

 

To date

Looking ahead

(next 12 months post June 2011)

The department recognises that the College, as an enterprise, has some way to go on this ‘EA journey’ and it is hoped that benefits will be accelerated from learning about good practice from other institutions that are further along this path, whilst at the same time sharing our own experiences. Being part of the Flexible Service Delivery programme, and engaging in the Enterprise Architecture Practice Group (and EA Foundations), we hope, will allow us to do just that.

Although the ICT Director recognises that the EA approach provides realisable benefits, we need in turn to get buy-in at senior management level within the College.

 

A longer term goal is to focus on the Data Architecture and the use of SOA for application delivery. Delivery of this may be constrained by resources.

 

Overall vision for EA practice

 

To date

Looking ahead

(next 12 months post June 2011)

Raise awareness of the EA approach within the ICT department and College as a whole.

 

Use the EA approach to increase the alignment of technology and business.

 

Redraft our Architecture Principles; Application Guidelines; and Architecture checklist using The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) as an underpinning framework.

 

Train four individuals in TOGAF to better understand EA.

Achieve greater cohesion between the business and IT within the College.

 

Begin to explore Data Architecture including master data management and its consequences for the College.

 

Begin to reap the benefits with the adoption of SOA.

 

 

 

Getting value from JISC resources

 

To date

Looking ahead

(next 12 months post June 2011)

Attending the FSD and EA Practice Group (EAPG) meetings has provided a focus to find out about TOGAF and send staff on courses.

 

The early adopters report was useful in shaping our thinking in our adoption of EA.

 

Interaction with other institutions on the EAPG on a regular basis is very useful.

Further interaction with other institutions on the EAPG. It is very useful to see what others are doing and assess our strengths and weaknesses.

 

Progress and achievements

 

  • Five staff have attended TOGAF training and 3 are certified.
  • We have agreed Architecture Principles, Application Guidelines, and an Architecture checklist for use by projects.
  • All our larger projects have an architecture work stream.
  • All projects must complete an architecture checklist for review. This ensures that more suitable products are chosen, or that the implications of not doing so are discussed.
  • Taking an architectural approach has allowed us to achieve common sign-on to our applications and we are moving towards a similar common approach with groups used for controlling access to resources eg file shares, Sharepoint areas and web sites. 
  • We have adopted a single platform for server virtualisation and have reduced the number of physical servers by 40%.
  • The STAR (SOA Technical Architectural Readiness) project is underway; this is concerned with allowing upgrade of Oracle E-Business suite whilst maintaining the no longer supported Oracle student records system (OSS) until such time as we can replace this major business system.
  • Initial training and awareness of good user interface design has started. This has revealed that good user interfaces may require change to business process.

 

Business benefits (impact) and opportunities (3xE's)

 

We have achieved efficiencies as a single username and password can be used to access all major systems (eg email, PC access, Oracle HR/Finance/Grants/Student, library system). Users are happy with this and there are reduced calls to the service desk which occur when multiple usernames and passwords are in use (some infrequently) meaning we have more effective use of staff time. 

 

The adoption of a single platform for server virtualization means we do not have people in different operating system teams supporting their own virtualisation platforms, saving staff time. There are also operational efficiencies in being able to manage production capacity more effectively.

 

Project managers filling in the architecture checklists and having them reviewed mean that there are fewer surprises when the technical teams are brought in to support new applications. Projects/Applications which may require new skills or additional staff are spotted early on and can be planned for.

 

We have identified an opportunity to improve our service with a common group approach, so that the same group (maintained in AD or LDAP for example) can be used across multiple applications eg Oracle Portal, Sharepoint and also utilised as a mail list to keep users up to date regarding the service.

 

A recent project has been initiated to identify and centralise data required to support the administration of teaching including personal tutor groups, capture of student options. Such data can then be used to set up the online student surveys used to capture feedback on teaching. Similarly this data can also be used to populate modules within the College VLE. Currently such data is held in departments and manually manipulated and uploaded into central systems, so there is an opportunity to improve efficiency and effectiveness of these processes. 

 

Key learning points: do's and don'ts, and advice to those who follow

 

  1. Get some TOGAF training, even if it’s just acquiring an overview.
  2. Don’t feel you have to apply all of TOGAF, only use those bits which fit with your organisation.
  3. Draft some Architecture Principles and some specific IT application guidelines so that everyone in your department understands what your IT architecture is, at least at a high level. This can avoid embarrassing conversations where someone buys a product that uses a technology you deprecate and expects you to support it.