For the official information on IA have a look at studiegids.tudelft.nl and other official student resources such as the official TUDelft page for the CS-IA track.
This page contains a variety of informal information about IA as well as draft material for those official sites, but is therefore always UNDER CONSTRUCTION :-).
Below you find information about:
Information Architecture (IA) is a multi-disciplinary master's degree track. It is a collaborative programme of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science (EEMCS) and the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM). Within the TPM faculty, the associated track falls under the MSc programme in Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management (SEPAM). Information Architecture is formally a track of the MSc Computer Science but has its own programme, which it partially shares with the IA track within SEPAM. Students who have completed the IA track receive an official notice in their MSc certificates.
The IA programme combines aspects from computer science and from management, and thus addresses the problem of concurrently designing and engineering enterprises and their supporting ICT applications. It concentrates on the alignment between organizational needs and the engineering opportunities and solutions offered by novel ICT solutions. An information architect is a professional who bridges the gap between business and ICT. Students from both the Computer Science faculty and SEPAM participate in the programme, and they collaborate in several projects.
The advent of modern digital information and communication technology (ICT) has facilitated dramatic improvements in efficiency and productivity in organisations across the spectrum: large and small, public and private. These organisations rely increasingly on innovative web-based systems and services to manage their operations and meet the needs of their customers and clients. With the expanding capabilities that the Web and its supporting technologies offer for managing information and services, both inside and outside an organisation, businesses and organisations see new opportunities to implement and manage innovative internal and external business processes. The purpose of the MSc Track in Information Architecture is to train computer scientists to become system architects - specialists in designing and engineering systems that align organisational needs with the engineering opportunities and solutions for Web-based and services-based information systems.
Computer Science graduates are in great demand in both the private and the public sectors, and information architects are among the most sought after computer scientists. With their understanding of information technology and business processes, graduates of the Information Architecture programme are able to move into positions in non-profit organisations, governmental agencies, and a wide range of positions in the private sector.
Graduates have been hired by consultancy companies such as Capgemini, Sogeti, Logica, and Ordina, "user" organizations like KLM, Rijkswaterstaat, ING, and Philips, and "supplier" organizations like IBM, SAP, and Cordys.
The Information Architecture Track is a multi-disciplinary programme. You will take courses offered by the faculties of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science; and Technology, Policy and Management. This mix of courses is a combination of "hard" sciences and "soft" topics, such as Web and Semantic Web Engineering, Web Data Management, Designing Innovative ICT-infrastructures & Services, or Designing Multi-Actor Systems, and thus IA prepares you for the role you will often play, as an information architect, bridging the gap between business and ICT. In the programme, there is a particular emphasis on meeting the needs of organisations in which information and processes are distributed inside and outside the organisation: with an open, dynamic and flexible Web-based and service-based infrastructure, these organisations can take the best advantage of technological opportunities as they confront future challenges.
Per September 1, 2010 the track Information Architecture will look as follows:
In innovative ICT-based support solutions for organizations, the World-Wide Web and services offered via the Web play major roles. With the possibilities that the Web and its supporting technologies offer for managing information and services, inside and outside of an organization, the opportunities to manage the organization's internal and external processes have increased. To exploit the opportunities and effectively design and use Web and services-based solutions the IA programme researches the alignment between organizational needs and engineering opportunities and solutions of Web and services-based information systems.
Web services are increasingly behaving as nodes in a digital, dynamic ecosystem. On the one hand, this new situation requires flexible, spontaneous and opportunistic collaboration activities to be identified and established among (business) parties. On the other hand, it also requires engineering approaches able to integrate new functionalities and behaviors into running systems and active, distributed, interdependent processes. This requires architecture approaches to combine organizational and coordination theories with model driven development, for the implementation, deployment and management of dynamic, flexible and robust service-oriented business applications.
The goals of the IA research programme are:
The approach followed in the IA research programme is that the combined research groups at TU Delft do fundamental and applied research in web and service engineering. By the nature of the groups, from within the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science and the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, IA·includes researchers conducting fundamental research in the theories for design and use of innovative Web and services-based information systems, as well as researchers that study the application of theories in practice. The latter is characterized by a close cooperation with "user" organizations, large and small, public and private.
E-government, e-business and extended enterprise architectures: Governmental service provisioning is increasingly organized around networks of public and private organizations. This development requires that organizations collaborate in networks and that there is effective orchestration of the interactions. Orchestration is viewed as the ability to coordinate the activities of the organizations in a network to ensure that the organizations work in concert. Creation of cross-organizational business processes requires changes outside the boundaries of a single organization. Organization responsibilities and accountabilities are changing and new (inter)organizational roles and mechanisms are needed.
Analysis and simulation of complex organizations: The deployment of organizations in dynamic and unpredictable settings brings forth critical issues concerning the design, implementation and validation of their behavior, and should provide sufficient representation of the institutional requirements as well as enough flexibility to accommodate heterogeneous participants, so that they have the freedom to act according to their own capabilities and demands. Design and analysis of complex socio-technical systems requires taking into account the dichotomy between individual and global desires and requirements.
Business-Service alignment: New generations of networked applications require software services that can be dynamically deployed, adjusted and composed. Engineering successful ICT infrastructures and services requires a thorough insight into the business goals, its supporting business processes, and related information needs. The development, integration, and application of appropriate modeling tools that support effective business-alignment are the focus of this research action line.
Agile Information Systems: The use of ICT in dynamic environments like crisis management and disaster recovery demand for high level types of intelligence and flexibility. Smart on-the-fly orchestration adapted to the specific event(s) taking place and its actual risk level, are directions of Information Systems research we are taking in this action.
Business Intelligence: Current and future intelligence-based organizations bring their data together in big datawarehouses and integrate them to information and knowledge. The development and application of Intelligent Data Analysis tools based on which operational activities can be optimized and tactic/ strategic decision making improved, is the specific focus of this research action line.
Web data management: Modern organizations deal with massive volumes of information and knowledge, both internally and in their interaction with their environment, e.g. suppliers, customers. In innovative solutions this information is shared and integrated via Web-based solutions, and the Web data management action line studies the design and use of Web-based technologies that support effective and efficient management of distributed data for organizations.
Semantic Web: For the integration and interoperability of information and knowledge inside and between organizations, semantic interoperability is a key enabler. The Semantic Web action line studies the theory and application of Semantic Web technologies to foster interoperability for organizations and to enable new information retrieval and end-user access paradigms, e.g., access adapted to context or user or personalized search.
Web engineering & software architecture: To facilitate Web-based solutions, the infrastructure for exchanging data and services on a Web-scale, needs to be in place, e.g., at the levels of network, software, and data. The Web engineering action line studies technologies and engineering processes that aim to enable truly Web-based information systems, able to perform with data and services that are distributed at Web scale and with users that access via the Web.
Information security and privacy (enhancing technologies): Our current complex society strongly depends on the availability of the right information, to the right person, at the right time. The realization of this requires a complex set of coherent measures, both of organizational and technical nature, while taking into account privacy and other human values. The realization of dedicated security-, trust- and other human values-based information systems is the central challenge of this research action line.
For more information about the research, for example to get in contact with individual experts, one may contact prof.dr.ir. Geert-Jan Houben via wis@ewi.tudelft.nl .
Many people are involved in education like that in IA. Here, a non-exhaustive list of people that are involved formally or informally in IA.
CS-IA master coordinator: | dr.ir. Jan Hidders | |
CS education director: | dr. Emile Hendriks | |
IA steering committee: | (chair) prof.dr.ir. Geert-Jan Houben | |
prof.dr. Yao-Hua Tan | ||
dr.ir. Jan Hidders | ||
dr. Virginia Dignum | ||
dr. Emile Hendriks | ||
dr. Marijn Janssen |
Students that like to know more about IA-related education can contact:
The main teaching staff for IA is from two groups in EEMCS and TPM:
Other individual courses in the core curriculum are supplied by other groups from EEMCS and TPM.
