Part 1: Article Sowa & Zachman – “Extending and Formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture”

Question 1

Zachman introduced a framework for Information System Architecture (ISA/Zahman framework). Explain this framework.

Answer 1

It provides a taxonomy for relating the concepts that describe the real world to the concepts that describe an information system and its implementation. It provides a way of viewing a system from many different perspectives and showing how these are related.

Question 2

Why have many large organisations great difficulty responding to change?

Answer 2

Part of this difficulty is due to lack of internal understanding of the complex structure and components in different areas of the organisation.

Question 3

What are the 5 perspective (rows) of the model?

Answer 3

1. Scope
2. Enterprise or business model
3. System model
4. technology model
5. Components

Question 4

Explain the perspective ‘scope’ of the framework.

Answer 4

An executive summary for a planner or investor who wants an estimate of the scope of the system, what it would cost, and how it would perform.

Question 5

Explain the perspective ‘Enterprise or business model’ of the framework.

Answer 5

The design of the business and it shows the business entities and processes and how these interact.

Question 6

Explain the perspective ‘System model’ of the framework.

Answer 6

Designed by a system analyst who must determine the data elements and functions that represent business entities and processes.

Question 7

Explain the perspective ‘Technology model’ of the framework.

Answer 7

Adapt the information system model to the details of programming languages, I/O devices, or other technology

Question 8

Explain the perspective ‘Components’ of the framework.

Answer 8

Detailed specifications that are given to programmers who code individual modules without being concerned with the overall context of structure of the system.

Question 9

This framework correpsond to the questions ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘where’. Later on, the framework has been extended with the questions ‘who’, ‘when’, and ‘why’. Explain these new columns in the framework.

Answer 9

1. Who: It is useful to abstract the concept of people out of the real-world enterprise because of the significance of designing the organizational infrastructure or the people-top-people relationships of the enterprise.
2. When: Time is abstracted out of the real world to design the event-to-event relationships that establish the performance criteria and quantitative levels for enterprise resources.
3. Why: The why column would be comprised of the descriptive representations that depicts the motivation of the enterprise, and the basic columnar model would
   likely be ends-means-ends, where ends are objectives (or goals) and means are strategies (or methods).

Question 10

What are the 7 rules of the framework?

Answer 10

1. The columns have no order/no prioritizing
2. Each column has a simple, basic model.
3. The basic model of a column must be unique.
4. Each row represent a distinct, unique perspective.
5. Each cell is unique
6. The total of all cells in one row is a complete model for that actor
7. The logic van be used to describe any creation/building.

Question 11

What are four managerial options to deal with complexity?

Answer 11

1. Try to reverse engineer the artifacts form the existing object
2. Take a trial-and-error approach
3. Make assumptions about it,
4. Just tear it down and start over.