Thanks for highlighting this report. I have been very interested in IA in the recent past, and have come across web-site designers trying to take-over this term. There even seems to be quasi-official bodies like "Information Architecture Institute"http://iainstitute.org/which takes architecture to a whole different layer. Apparently, everyone seems to be an architect these days.
TOGAF seems to cover two streams within this area - Data Architecture and Application Architecture.
But coming back to the subject, this Forrester report seems to be comprehensive and well-researched. It has gathered data from a variety of sources/clients and prepared reports categorising the current status of different organisations. It goes on to take us through a step by step approach towards an IA, although I would have thought most of these steps are common-sense with a hint of TOGAF. But, I guess much of architecture is common sense with some creativity.
I like many of the references in the report, but most of them cost a few bucks which I won't be prepared to pay. For eg, "Creating The Information Architecture Function" for $500.
In our own case, much of our IA is unstructured, and the battle is between devoting expensive resources towards standardising existing information from ground up vs delivering incremental changes. I personally veer towards the latter. Being a utility, we prefer to take an evolutionary approach rather than a revolutionary one. There are pros and cons to both arguments.
Thanks and regards,
Joseph
On Jan 25, 2:31 pm, Milan Guenther
> Forrester has published a free report, for the first time recognising
> that there are two distinct definitions of Information Architecture:
> Architects defining information objects in the enterprise, and
> Architects working in the field of User Experience, making information
> findable to users via web sites and portals.
> You may access it here:
> Forrester Topic Overview: Information Architecture
> http://bit.ly/64LlHl
> I would like to invite all members of this EA community to share their
> view on Information Architecture, as there is currently a contest
> running initiated from the IA Institute: Explain IA. You may include
> diagrams, text definitions, and also the relationship to related
> concepts such as Enterprise Architecture and User Experience.http://www.flickr.com/groups/explainia/
> To cite from the report:
> "But arguing whether the term should represent the structuring of either
> all enterprisewide information assets enterprise IA or the
> information for an individual Web site, portal, or application UI
> user experience IA belies the more integrated mission of IA. The
> value in IA s structuring the information in an enterprise is not in
> attaining some abstract goal of imposing order on disarray but in
> enabling the provisioning of the right information in the appropriate
> context to the stakeholders who need it."
> I know the EA community already struggles to agree on what EA is about,
> so maybe thinking about IA is a welcomed distraction? :-)
> Kind regards
> Milan
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