A Qualitative Evaluation of Enterprise Architecture of Islamic Azad University: Developing a Model of Architecture Services in Desired State

Enterprise architecture approach as the dominant paradigm in the field of Information Technology Planning, has growingly been used in public and private organizations. Proper control of the changes in line with the organization goals requires accurate knowledge of the current and future states and a clear plan to move from the current to the desired stat. This can be accomplished through enterprise architecture. As Islamic Azad University has multiple branches across the country, it is essential that it follow a general comprehensive plan aligned with the organization goals. Therefore, in this study, the current architecture of Dehaghan branch from region four of Islamic Azad University and the university central secretariat were selected and evaluated. A qualitative approach was undertaken in documents analysis and Delphi method. As such, face-to-face interviews with vice chancellors, managers and employees along with the documents provided the data to analyze. Then, contrastive matrixes and descriptive models based on reference evaluation models of enterprise architecture were developed in terms of quality, alignment, convergence, integration, maintenance and development capabilities, performance, and security. Through document analysis, technical evaluation criteria were generated. The results of this evaluation suggested that the current state was not satisfactory and required improvement. Thus, a new service-oriented model was posited for the future state and then assessed using the Delphi method. The feedback indicated that the proposed model was appropriate to a large extent and approved by Iranian architects and experts.