CC BY
27УДК 378
Dmitry Kudryavtsev1,
Associate Professor, Candidate of Technical Sciences,
Maxim Arzumanayn1, Senior Lecturer
THE ROLE OF COMMUNITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A CASE
OF TEACHING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE IN RUSSIA
!Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Graduate School of Management Saint-Petersburg
university, [email protected], m. arzumanyan @gsom.spbu.ru
Abstract. New dynamic interdisciplinary and practice-oriented knowledge domains are becoming more important nowadays. However, developing and running educational programs in such domains is a challenging task. There is a lack of up-to-date training materials on the topic, faculty expertise in the subject area, interdisciplinary dialogue and practical examples. The role of professional and academic communities is also emerging as well as new educational initiatives which are beyond traditional university environment. This article presents the case-study of initiating and organizing open free ad-hoc education and research program on Enterprise Architecture on the basis of «Game|Changers» platform and then - creation of interuniversity academic competence center on enterprise architecture «EA Lab». EA Lab is to connect practice and theory, convert real projects to case studies, create an academic community for experience exchange and collaborative efforts to improve the level of education and research on enterprise architecture in Russia.
Keywords: community of practice, teaching, higher education, knowledge sharing, enterprise architecture.
1. Introduction
Modern enterprise and information technology (IT) management is one of the emerging industries nowadays where new approaches, principles, methods and technologies continuously occur.
Such industries are characterized by a combination of the following features:
• Breakthrough and dynamic change: there is no existing established methodology - and therefore, there aren't any prepared methodological materials and teaching instructions; conference papers and articles in journals form the major part of the materials for this field;
• Applied nature of discipline: there is a tight connection to practical application and empirical experiment;
• Cross-disciplinarity: EA solutions and research conducting require knowledge from different fields and disciplines from the business management, IT and engineering spheres.
Examples of such industries include bioinformatics, man-machine interaction (usability), data science etc., and also enterprise architecture (EA), which will be discussed in this article.
Training specialists in these fields is a special challenge for higher educational systems. Due to the lack of experts and teaching materials, differences in the academic community and new emerging standards, it is quite difficult for universities to create a well-rounded and relevant educational program. It requires engagement of various stakeholders, flexibility in program development, proactive role of learners, theory and practice integration and applying practical case studies.
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an emerging cross-disciplinary field concerned with the design, management and transformation of a modern enterprise as complex system (business and IT) to ensure values of the key stakeholders [1, 2, 3]. EA has all the features providing evidence that teaching in this discipline and implementing science and research activities in higher education can be challenging.
International standards and methodologies are trying to formalize requirements for EA specialists by roles definition [4]. Efforts in role definition are underway in a number of methodologies and some companies within their methods. Educational standards in Russia also contain requirements for teaching EA that will be considered next.
In Russia EA specialists are demanded mainly by IT departments of big organizations. The common tasks for big companies often referred either to IT costs saving (optimization), or to increasing transparency and defining value of IT for business, or both. For instance, as a part of Smart Architects company we worked on projects within Oil and Gas industry for Gazprom Neft Company (setting up IT architecture management practices), Rosneft, Bash-neft. The role of the project customer takes also the government, for instance, as a part of Business Engineering Group company we took part in projects for the Ministry for Economic Development and the Moscow City Government [5]. There are also EA architecture positions at telecommunication companies, like cellular service providers (MTS, Beeline etc.), and at many banks, including Central bank of Russian Federation. In middle size enterprises a common practice is to have an department of organizational development or something similar. Such departments we observed in construction companies, airlines, retail etc. Usually they do not operate such terms as EA and focus on organizational structure and processes. So, if big companies are interesting in EA mostly from an IT point of view, middle-size companies are interesting from the business architecture perspective. Generally the EA market services are on its initial stage of lifecycle, which calls for appropriate methods in education connected with experimental methods.
2. EA Teaching Context in Russia
A definite set of requirements for educational programs conform to the Federal State Educational Standards of higher education established by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation [6]. The standards assume competency-based approach [7], that's why the main attention is focused on competences, and not on the substantive aspects that are left to the discretion of the university where the program track is realized. EA as a competence is included to the standards for program tracks "Business Informatics" and "Applied Informatics in Economics", both bachelor and masters programs. The following standard for Business Informatics will be considered next.
One of the main fields of bachelor graduates' professional activities is enterprise architecture design. The Bachelor graduate in Business Informatics possesses such professional competencies as: "analysis of enterprise architecture"; "ability to design electronic enterprise architecture". Though the Master graduate in Business Informatics should possess the following professional competencies: "ability to apply system analysis methods when analyzing enterprise architecture"; "ability to draw up the development strategy for enterprise architecture"; "ability to design enterprise architecture"; "ability to develop and integrate enterprise architecture components"; "ability to conduct researches in order to find new models and improvement approaches to enterprise architecture"; "ability to provide consult for improvement of enterprise architecture"; "ability to manage innovation implementation for the development of enterprise architecture". It should be emphasized that 7 out of 19 professional competencies for business informatics program are directly concerned with enterprise architecture.
According to the statistics [8], there are 29 universities in Russia that teach Business Informatics and provide the opportunity to gain competencies within enterprise architecture. Among them one should mention the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University, Saint-Petersburg State University of Telecommunications, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, etc.
When analyzing academic programs at different universities, we came to a conclusion that all of them are constructed in a different way, but basically a program is designed by taking into account the experience and qualifications of academic staff (professors, etc.), and the main focus of bachelor programs lies on information systems architecture.
At the same time, there is a growing trend in international practice that EA is being included to manager training programs, including MBA (f. e. Antwerp Management School, University of St. Gallen, Vlerick Business School). Apart from Business Informatics EA is also taught within some academic programs in "Applied Informatics in Economics", and also is newly of-
fered within the "Management" program (f. e. at Saint Petersburg State University Graduate School of Management).
The main issues influencing practical application, research and education of EA in Russia are the following:
• lack of specialists on Russian market that prevents making EA a really valuable tool for business transformation that takes place in the most big enterprises;
• lack of awareness within academia experts of international standards, bodies of knowledge and scientific research results;
• lack of practical cases and understanding market demands in EA courses in academia;
• and finally there is no common methodology to teach and learn EA considering initial maturity level of EA market in Russia.
Considering the above mentioned issues in 2014 an interuniversity educational-research program was launched by the authors as an experiment to explore possible ways to address them.
3. Interuniversity Project Game|Changers EA Track: Creating Experience & Design The Interuniversity education-research project "The Game|Changers Enterprise Architecture track" (EA track) [9] was a free one-year program for ad-hoc education and research on modern enterprise management and engineering. The course structure offered classes with experts and key people from enterprise architecture, organizational, project and IT-management, both from industry and academia. The offered learning approach is pro-active and belongs to second for forth stage of learning formalization according to Figure 1 [10].
Fig. 1. Knowledge Maturing Process [10]
This project was aimed to create a team of young specialists and to test the format of informal education for EA learning. The course united students with different skill sets, experts, curators and partners. The course curators pursued the aims of gaining the experience in new teaching methods, developing course materials, conducting researches and setting up new contacts. The participants enrolled in this program were introduced to the world of Enterprise Architecture, with guidance and advice of the international leading experts and partners, providing contacts and potential projects to breed leaders.
Two key partners invited to support the initiative (Business Engineering Group and Smart Architects) expressed interests in expertise development, team building, researches, engaging students for participation in the practical part of the course and generally in EA advancement. The role of the partners played also vendors (IBM, MEGA) with EA modeling tools. More than 30 experts endorsed the initiative.
The course consisted of lectures, seminars and workshops with leading experts in the EA field. At the end of the course students worked on their personal projects that could be conducted in a research or practical mode. Special roles were outlined: a mentor (or a project leader/curator) - the key stakeholder, who took the decision on whether the project was implemented successfully or not - a necessary requirement in the course assessment; project consultants - experts, interested in project topics. They were involved at different project stages for expertise of results and/or giving recommendations. And course curators, who participated in topic approval, controlling intermediate outcome and accepting project results. Project-specific requirements were evaluated, including clear statement, description, project milestones, results and its evaluation criteria.
The program also offered internships and employment opportunities at partner companies for the best students. By completing the course one of the students has got an offer at Smart Architects company where he is working now as a project manager; one more course participant has got employed by the partner company "OpenWay"; another course graduate has created his own approach to managing start-ups and now is using it in his practice; several students have brought together project topics with their master thesis at the universities (f. e., Capability based planning).
Authors of the initiative collected a lot of materials, gained contacts and educational experience in teaching EA using different formats and approaches. All the materials were thoroughly gathered by students and kept using wiki-platform PBworks.
4. The Role of Communities in the Developing of Dynamic Fields
As of today, there is a number of dynamically developing, interdisciplinary and practice-oriented fields, in which universities cannot efficiently pre-
pare competent specialists. These fields are characterized by the development of educational initiatives outside traditional higher education institutions. The reason is that there are many active people and companies interested in developing skills and competencies in these fields. At the same time academic programs at universities usually seem to be unadaptable and not so flexible.
For generating similar interuniversity initiatives in dynamic industries one could consider the following stakeholders:
• Specialists with the following concerns: communication, experience exchange (and it is worth to highlight the importance of experience exchange between specialists against their competition due to greenfield).
• Companies promoting these fields as their main activity with the following concerns: PR, intern/specialists training.
• Companies interested in services offered by these fields with the following concerns: creating project solutions within course practice tasks.
• Experts with the following concerns: engaging young specialists in projects, knowledge sharing, setting up contacts with young and perspective specialists as well as with other involved specialists.
There are similar communities in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow in other rapidly developing fields of science and knowledge, e.g. in bioinformatics. Created in 2013 the St. Petersburg Bioinformatics Institute [11] helps to prepare specialists in bioinformatics, involving students from biology, math and technical sciences to participate in educational and research activities; devotes part of its efforts towards the promotion of bioinformatics, and regularly tracks the development trends in this field. Another vivid example is the Urban Studies Institute "Sreda" [12], which creates, accumulates and develops latest knowledge on study and design of cities and territories.
Described communities play a powerful role in establishing and developing new and dynamic fields by means of experts' alliance, new specialists' engagement, research works and project realizations and educational practices and methods.
5. EA Lab Competency Centre: Creating Experience & Design
Successful implementation of the EA Track project, accumulated contacts, materials and experience allowed redirecting our attention towards teaching EA in higher education and initiating the creation of an EA Lab Competency Centre [13, 14]. This center became a community of practice within academic environment [15], which also links universities with industry experts (mostly gathered from EA track). The fact that expert workshops attended other experts played the role of a "black swan" of the EA Track project. There were more experts than students at the workshop with the Russian ITSM community leader. It clearly revealed an emerging demand for experience exchange, community creation and the importance of efforts consolida-
tion for constructing/designing and realization of academic programs among teaching staff.
5.1. EA Lab Competency Centre: Background and Creation
As an answer on identified demands appeared an Inter-university Academic Enterprise Architecture Competence Centre "EA Lab", created by a group of professors and experts in 2014. Currently the Centre core team consists of 6 experts, among which there are 3 company executives from Smart Architects, Business Engineering Group and Center of Effective Enterprises developing market for EA services in Russia. As a result, the Centre team possesses an explicit conception of the market for EA services in Russia, experience in EA project sales and implementation, business projects, professional certification (TOGAF, ArchiMate, COBIT, ITSM, LEADing Practice) and vendors certification (IBM, MEGA, Software AG, etc.) and scientific and methodological resources, including teaching guides, guidelines for laboratory classes, academic papers and membership in communities (LEADing Practice, OMG, Business Architecture Guild).
The center is trying to find it place as a medium between different stakeholders (Figure 2), becoming a cornerstone for the ecosystem development which is needed for EA to become more valuable and distributed practice in Russia.
S Experience
exchange S Self-realization V Professional relationships extension Companies
Universities Management
•f Traineeship S Practice S
Communities
<V>EALab
S Education Educators
S Contacts (teachers)
■f Materials
S Experience exchange
•f Consultations
S Participation in events
■f Sending students to practice V
Students
y
S
Improving the quality of teaching
Program outsourcing
Experts
Vendors
Fig. 2. Key stakeholders 5.2. EA Lab Components
Taking an inside look, EA Lab's working process compounds in interaction of four main components, illustrated in Figure 3:
Training Centre - aimed at designing/adaptation of course materials, running a course in teaching EA in Russia, as well as providing selective consultations, seminars and workshops in order to improve approaches and practices in teaching EA;
Project Centre (Practice) - engaging students to participate in scientific and research activities and projects for companies;
Research Centre - aimed at consolidation practices in teaching EA, as well as engaging post graduates and master students to perform a set of collaborative scientific tasks;
International Relations Centre - activities related with international contacts and communication, participation in international conferences, entry to international communities as well as cooperation with vendors (IBM, MEGA, Orbus, Software AG).
Fig. 3. EA Lab Components
EA Lab associates representatives of the academic environment, namely professors and students, with the companies operating in this field, as well as with EA experts. This approach allows us to identify and solve real issues, to conduct scientific researches based on real data. The overall collaboration of all stakeholders and design of common information space forms the EA Lab ecosystem.
5.3. Results of the year 2015
Significant results have been achieved by efforts of the expert team, through designing teaching materials and hosting a number of events and activities. This work was preceded by the experience of teaching and developing teaching practices in EA in St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg State University Graduate School of Management, National Research University Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg. To form the methodological basis all materials (including expert materials from Game|Changers EA Track) have been collected and supplemented by case studies on real projects.
During 2015 two courses in EA teaching were held by EA Lab in Russia, which were attended by more than 15 professors from leading universities in the country mentioned above. By completing the course all the professors have joined the community that now consists of more that 25 specialists.
Along with interaction with teachers, working with students is also one of our main interests. Though an internship program is still not a formalized process, we are receiving requests from students, as well as from teachers. By now engaging active and motivated students in research work and projects takes place on an individual basis.
Fig. 4. Estimates obtained as a feedback
6. EA Teaching and Learning Approach
In two years the Center team and a dawning community of researchers, teachers and practitioners in the EA field have developed an approach to teaching EA in higher education [16] that implements the following principles:
• Action based learning (group work, case method);
• Developing effective communication through teamwork;
• Developing entrepreneurial thinking (new ideas generation tasks);
• Developing system thinking and working within engineering approach.
These principles are widely used in IT-related disciplines, but in terms of EA this practice is extremely small. The complexity of such an approach for the course in EA is introduced by the need to develop transparent case studies, which could serve as the reference (model) material. Created by EA Lab, the cases while based on the examples of a real projects are largely adapted for educational purposes and covers the use of models, corresponding to the current best practices (Business Model Canvas, Balanced Scorecard method, Business Capability Map etc.)
The proposed methods have been experimentally tested at St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications, St. Petersburg State University Graduate School of Management and Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University as part of courses in EA and Business Engineering in 2015-2016, as well as within a three-day intensive seminar at the French Institute EPITECH in Paris in 2016.
Two EA tools were used for practice work: "ORG-Master" - EA modeling tool [17] developed by Business Engineering Group company and "Ar-chi" - free distributed EA modeling tool, using ArchiMate (Fig. 5).
Figure 6 shows the basic entities with which student teams work during the course.
Fig.5. One of the individual descriptions of an enterprise in "Archi"
The object of their research/modeling is a real enterprise, so that students are quite aware of its organization activities or want to understand its principles, or a fictional enterprise. In the first case, the emphasis is put on business analysis and modeling, the second case highlights generation of new ideas and an entrepreneurial approach.
Pursuing an aim of a collaborative development of methods and approaches to teaching enterprise architecture, EA Lab conducts courses for professors teaching EA at universities. After the course the participants get all
learning materials and are invited to take part in further development and design of educational methods and materials.
Fig.6. The main entities and relationships (metamodel) explored as a part of a training
course in "ORG-Master" software
A simplified methodology of EA management for teaching purposes was developed and tested within the EA Lab community [16]. This methodology on the one hand is available for students' comprehension, and, on the other hand, allows students to understand and apply in practice the main methods and technologies of enterprise architecture. The proposed simplified EA management methodology has been tested and used by while carrying out courses in leading universities of the Russian Federation:
• in Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University in the "Enterprise Architecture" course for undergraduate students since 2015;
• in the Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University as a part of the course "Technologies of Business Engineering" for Masters students since 2015;
• in Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation within "Enterprise Architecture" course for undergraduate students since 2016;
• in Higher School of Business Informatics of The National Research University Higher School of Economics for undergraduate students since 2015;
• In the Bonch-Bruevich Saint-Petersburg State University of Telecommunications within the framework of the "Enterprise Architecture" course for undergraduate students since 2015.
The students use the proposed simplified EA management methodology to do their term problem-oriented project. They choose an enterprise, and find bottlenecks or unrealised opportunities in the current state of the enterprise, offer and validate their decision, as well as the technology of its implementation with the help of EA methods and tools.
In order to support aforementioned methodology a textbook on enterprise architecture [18] was created and shared within EA Lab community.
6. Outlining Current Objectives and Tasks
The community now includes about 30 people. Since 2017 the Center plans focusing on the processes that would associate members of the community. Seminars and a conference are also on the agenda.
In May 2016 at the international conference "Innovation Ecosystem: universities and scientific organizations" [19] it was stated by the vice-ministry of science and education that for the ecosystems development it is crucial to have an intensive horizontal communications within academics and experts in different fields of knowledge. It was also stated that described communities are going to be created in a few years. In such case EA Lab and similar initiatives will provide the basis for development of the communities.
EA Lab activities are focused on addressing the issues mentioned in the previous paragraph: consolidate academic and expert community and other stakeholders to make a shift towards more widespread use of EA for Russian enterprises; become an experimental platform for testing teaching and learning methods; become a competency center, being known with international research, methods and practice; be a platform where practical cases are being rethinked methodologically and case studies are created, be a platform for collaborative scientific research and internship programs; and finally be a mechanism where from experiment common practices of EA teaching and learning and developed and distributed as an off-the-shelf solution.
Authors also participate with other experts (E. Zinder, Y. Telnov, D. Kozhevnikov, M. Anshina, etc.) in creation of the National Union of Enterprise Architects in Russia which will be a good complementary initiative.
7. Conclusions
All in all the Game|Changers informal course for highly motivated students was a good platform for experiment and exploration of appropriate formats and methods for teaching and learning EA. The results of those experiments were preconditions to form the EA Lab center of competence for professors and lecturers, which helped to consolidate resources, share experience and develop teaching approach within member universities. It was important to consolidate different stakeholders to make a quantitative shift in EA market at the initial maturity level.
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