Information Architecture (IA)

Information is one of the most important assets to any enterprise. Most organization struggle to manage Information and information is not available at the right time in the right format to the right people. Information Architecture addresses the informational needs of the enterprise.
The objective of Information Architecture is to manage the information of the enterprise by aligning the busines processes to the information systems that support these processes. IA promotes information sharing among business units and external partners. Following activities include in an IA initiative:

• Define information architecure framework and methodology
• Define and Establish data governance framework and methodology.
• Standardize data, data definition and underlying semantics, location and context of the information
• Identify and document information subject area and its owners & stewards
• Define conceptual, logical data models, state transition models, process mapping models and data flow diagrams
• Define and document Master Data (a.k.a "reference data") which are to be used across multiple business processes and develop strategy for Master Data Management (MDM)
• Define Data Management Process models, including:
  • Data Lifecycle view
  • Data Dissemination view
  • Data Privacy and security view
  • Data Model management view
  • Data Service view
• Identify and document existing applications including any legacy and desktop applications (Spreadsheet etc)
• Define and document applications environment and application internal architecture
• Define certain application views, incluidng:
  • Common application service view
  • Application interoperability view
  • Application / user location view etc
• Relate business data entities to business functions identified in business architecture
• Relate business data entities to applications components
• Relate business functions to applications components

following questions could be answered by implementing an IA:

• How are the information assets used by business and in which process ?
• Who executes those process and where are those processes executed ?
• When are the processes used and in which business cycle?
• Who are the stewards for the information asset?
• Where are the information asset captured and stored ?
• What is the security classification of the information assets ?