Development of enterprise architecture management methodology for teaching purposes

Enterprise architecture is considered as a certain object of management, providing in business a general view of the enterprise and the mutual alignment of parts of this enterprise into a single whole, and as the discipline that arose based on this object. The architectural approach to the modeling and design of the enterprise originally arose in the field of information technology and was used to design information systems and technical infrastructure, as well as formalize business requirements. Since the early 2000’s enterprise architecture is increasingly used in organizational development and business transformation projects, especially if information technologies are involved. Enterprise architecture allows describing, analyzing and designing the company from the point of view of its structure, functioning and goal setting (motivation).
In the context of this approach, the enterprise is viewed as a system of services, processes, goals and performance indicators, organizational units, information systems, data, technical facilities, etc. Enterprise architecture implements the idea of a systematic approach to managing and changing organizations in the digital economy where business is strongly dependent on information technologies.
This increases the relevance of the suggested approach at the present time, when companies need to create and successfully implement a digital business strategy.
Teaching enterprise architecture in higher educational institutions is a difficult task due to the interdisciplinary of this subject, its generalized nature and close connection with practical experience. In addition, modern enterprise architecture management methodologies are complex for students and contain many details that are relevant for individual situations.
The paper proposes a simplified methodology for enterprise architecture management, which on the one hand will be comprehensible to students, and on the other hand, it will allow students to apply the main methods and technologies of the enterprise architecture in practice.
The requirements for the simplified methodology were defined.
These requirements were taken into account during methodology development and can be used when applying the methodology – it will be possible to understand the goals that can be achieved with its help, the assumptions made and the existing limitations. The proposed methodology defines the layers, aspects and objects of the enterprise architecture, describes the tasks of managing enterprise architecture and the artifacts created (lists, matrices, diagrams).
The proposed methodology can be used to conduct training projects in which methods and tools of enterprise architecture management are used to optimize the company’s work based on the capabilities of information technology. Such projects will help not only to develop students’ skills, but also to establish a dialogue between universities and industry – the provider of problems and tasks for solving within students’ projects.
The proposed simplified methodology for managing the architecture of the enterprise is tested and used by the authors when conducting courses in the leading universities of the Russian Federation: Graduate School of Management (St. Petersburg State University), St. Petersburg State University, Finance University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Higher School of Economics and BonchBruevich Saint-Petersburg State University of Telecommunications.

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