Seminar Tasks

1] In your groups you will research and create:

1. A corporate IT strategy that results in relevant projects to address the current issues
2. A solution to the issue of ageing hardware
3. A selection of identified business systems that are required to take the organisation forward - these need to be justified
4. Any other areas where ICT will benefit the organisation

You are allowed some creative licence in all aspects of these tasks.

2] Lines of Business

A Line of Business is defined as a separate area of activity within an organisation

• Using you allocated organisation, start to think of the different lines of business that it could undertake.
• For the purposes of this session 3 separate lines of business should be identified and used to populate the ‘Current’ (Baseline state) architecture cube.

For each line of business start to populate the cube

• You do not need to represent as a cube - a series of tables wull suffice:
• Once this is completed: start to think of the possible issues that your current IT landscape has. Think in terms of information flows, inefficiencies; waste and non-added value functions that are currently provided (feel free to be creative):

Line of business goes here
Goals and initiatives
Products and services
Data and information
Systems and applications
Networks and infrastructure

3] EA Key Questions

1. What are some of the differences between enterprise architecture (EA) and a systems-level planning approach?
2. Compare and contrast an organization and an enterprise.
3. Who are stakeholders in the EA program and associated activities and might they want to resist the EA program and associated activities?
4. Why is EA described as both a management program and an analysis and design method?
5. What are the four elements of an EA management program and the six elements of an EA analysis and design method?
6. Can EA be used by all types of enterprises? If so, why?
7. Why is it important to understand the “people side” of EA?
8. What is the simple representation of the unique holistic value of EA?
9. What is the value of creating Balanced Scorecards?

4] Balanced Scorecard Task

a] Create a Balanced Scorecard artefact for your organisation (Session 11 & 12 - Slide 12) - use at least 2 different strategic objectives

b] Why are these useful?

5] Risk Management Plan Task

Find a Risk Management Plan and a Security/Privacy Plan for a real-world enterprise in the public or private sector, and evaluate whether it links to an EA program. If not, suggest how the relationship could be established.

6] Identifying Risks Task

a] How could you mitigate against the following identifiable risks when transitioning (changing) your Corporate IT Landscape through a programme of projects?

b] Can you identify any more risks?

• change of strategy / corporate objectives
• staff resistance / management resistance
• Dependencies on other systems and processes and/or integration points missed
• Dishonesty about ROI
• Impact assessment ineffective or missed
• Lack of progress information/feedback
• Lack of contingency for live system updates
• People: not choosing the right team
• Unclear roles and responsibilities
• Poor or missing documentation
• Third party software / implementations not delivering what was specified / promised
• Insufficient or ineffective communications
• Doing the technology bit before the process bit
• Missed or flawed use cases
• Scope creep
• The use of new (perhaps unproven) technologies
• Loss of key personnel
• Insufficient testing prior to acceptance
• Insufficient training for end-users and maintenance personnel

7] Change Manager Characteristics/Skills Task

Research and report: 10 characteristics/skills of an effective Change Manager.

8] Cloud Provider Evaluation Task

Group 1 (Lowri; Jordan; Rachael) – compare and contrast the cloud offerings of Amazon Web Services and Google’s Cloud Platform - you will be feeding back to the group in a Tuesday session.

Group 2 (Ankita; Bil; Bish; Mohammed) – compare and contrast the cloud offerings of Microsoft Azure and Salesforce - you will be feeding back to the group in a Tuesday session.

All – choose, with justifications, the most suitable cloud provider for your organisations.

9] Cloud Computing Characteristics Questions

Cloud Computing Characteristics

1. _________________________ refers to the allocation or releasing of resources of the same type.
2. A _________________________ is a distinct and remote IT environment designed for the purpose of remotely provisioning scalable and measured IT resources
3. A database, a physical server, and a service are examples of _________________________
4. A _________________________ is a physical or virtual IT-related artifact (software or hardware) that resides within a cloud environment.
5. _________________________ occurs when an existing resource is replaced by another
6. _________________________ allows physical IT resources to provide multiple virtual images of themselves.
7. A _________________________ can be considered a software program made remotely accessible via a cloud.
8. An event-driven software program without a technical interface can be referred to as a _________________________
9. An IT resource not residing in a cloud, but instead residing in an internal IT enterprise environment is considered to be _________________________
10. A _________________________ is a pre-defined cloud-based platform comprised of a set of already installed IT resources, ready to be used and customized by a cloud consumer.
11. _________________________ is a mechanism used to replicate cloud-based IT resources.
12. When horizontally scaling, the allocation of resources is referred to as __________________ and the releasing of resources is referred to as __________________.
    • a. scaling up, scaling down
    • b. scaling down, scaling up
    • c. scaling in, scaling out
    • d. scaling out, scaling in
13. A cloud service consumer owned by Cloud Consumer A (an organization) accesses a cloud service offered by public Cloud A. Based on this, which of the following statements are true?
    • a. Cloud Consumer A has its own organizational boundary.
    • b. Cloud A has its own organizational boundary.
    • c. Cloud Consumer A extends its trust boundary to encompass the organizational boundary of Cloud A.
    • d. Cloud A extends its organizational boundary to encompass Cloud Consumer A.
14. Which of the following statements correctly describes the Cloud Balancing architecture?
    • a. A cloud architecture in which IT resources are load-balanced across multiple clouds.
    • b. A cloud architecture in which IT resources are load-balanced within a single cloud.
    • c. A cloud architecture in which IT resources are scaled in from a cloud to an on-premise environment.
    • d. A cloud architecture in which IT resources are scaled out from an on-premise environment to a cloud.
15. A cloud provider redundantly implements a cloud service deployment to increase its availability and reliability. Which of the following cloud mechanisms is likely to be used for this purpose?
    • a. multi-device broker
    • b. failover system
    • c. automated scaling listener
    • d. All of the above.

10] Policy Research Task

Enterprise Data Breaches on the Rise Despite Infosec Policies

Ref: Cloud Security Alliance

The results of the 2014 Protiviti IT Security and Privacy Survey reports that:

1. 77% of organizations have a password policy or standard
2. 67% of organizations have a data production and privacy policy
3. 67% of organizations have an information security policy
4. 59% of organizations have a workstation/laptop security policy
5. 59% of organizations have a user (privileged) access policy

Split these points between you and research such policies. Make sure all categories are covered. You will be reporting back to the group on a Tuesday session.

Exam news

The exam period is Monday 4th January – Tuesday 12th January 2016

Your privisional date is Wednesday 6th January in the morning

Case study will be presented later in the module and at least 1 month before the exam.

We will use a session for exam prep and you will have a chance to answer a sample question.

Watch this space for updates

Extra notes/links

Change Management: Microsoft