Abstract

For more than a decade now, IS practitioners have been widely urged to invest in the development and maintenance of information architecture. However, it is unclear whether practitioners have experienced the benefits claimed for information architecture. To gain an insight into the usage of information architecture, a large-scale survey was conducted. This paper analyses the survey and discusses its findings. Information architecture, as an IS planning and implementation tool, is being developed and used in many medium to large organizations. The two core components of information architecture, application architecture and corporate data model, are both perceived to be useful but in differing ways. A corporate data model is considered as valuable for data administration, database design and integrated application development, but not for IS planning particularly in relation to senior management communication. On the other hand, application architecture is perceived to offer value for both integrated application development and IS planning. However, the architecture's format and structure is often perceived to be too complex. The research concludes that information architecture is a useful IS planning and implementation tool, the effectiveness and value of which is dependent on the proper design and targeting of its components.

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