TiAC White Paper Repository
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Information Architecture White Papers

The following are a selection of information and enterprise architecture papers generated by members & friends of TiAC

Architecture Style

Architecture to Solutions
Lessons from successful information architectures.
 Principles and Attributes:
A confusion of Terms
Top-Down or Bottom-Up:
Which is the better approach to IA
A Brief Tour of Information Architecture
A short monograph that describes some of the salient characteristics of corporate architecture efforts
Five Styles of Information Architecture
The role of an architecture group in an organization is set by the mandate for the task, and the personality and background of the individuals. This paper describes five archetypes of these roles.
A Framework Does Not an Architecture Make
Some Thoughts on IT Doesn't Matter
Nick Wybolt's reflections on Nicholas G. Carr's article, "IT Doesn't Matter,"  that appeared in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review.  

Architecture Concepts and Patterns

Papers which describe ideas and approaches to solutions of technical and organizational problems in large scale implementations.

Information Architecture Strategy
By Carl Scheider    This paper briefly explains what information architecture is and how it can be constructed. Major components of architecture are described and defined, followed by a description of the major components of a strategy to implement the architecture.
Information Architecture: An Overview
Definitions of Information Architecture are discussed, as are the major components and benefits of an Information Architecture.
Information Architecture Review
A position paper discussing the challenges Information Architecture faces as a discipline in a corporate or enterprise IS organization.
Architecture 10 Years On
The first ten years of TiAC are the first ten years of the global adoption of the Internet outside the research community.  What lessons have we learned? 
Rules for Distributed Systems
This is a work in progress. Comments are invited.
The Evolving Role of the Enterprise Architect
As more of the core business processes are implemented in systems and networks of systems, with components internal and external to the enterprise, emergent properties like security will become increasingly important.  It is in leveraging the potential benefits and helping the organization to avoid the hazards in building these “systems of systems” that enterprise architecture will continue to deliver value to the enterprise.

Architecture Principles

Architecting Principles for Systems-of-Systems
By Mark Maier    This paper proposes a taxonomy of super-systems and exhibits a basic set of architecting principles to assist in their design.
Applications Architecture - Design Principles
By Carl Scheider ­ The purpose of this document is to publish the design principles to be used for all systems products.  The “applications architecture” refers to the internal design of the system components, as distinguished from the “technical design”, which includes development languages, communications protocols, and execution environment.
Making Principles Work
For all the importance attached to principles in architectures, some of the processes recommended for generating them seem rather cursory. This paper suggests formalizing the process and subjecting principles to regular reviews.  The concept of candidate principles is introduced and recommendations are made to augment the principle development process.

 Data Architecture

Data Architecture: An Overview
A brief description of data architecture and associated terms.
Data Administration & Repository Project
Answers to some common questions

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