Mission

Research, teaching and consulting in systemic methods for strategic thinking, enterprise architecture and requirements engineering.

Biography

Alain Wegmann joined EPFL in 1996. His interests are in techniques to better align business and IT. He developed, with his group and partners, the SEAM methods: SEAM for business (strategic thinking), SEAM for enterprise architecture (business/IT alignment) and SEAM for software (IT). The originality of SEAM is in the integration of generic systems thinking principles into discipline-specific methods. This integration has three benefits: (1) the possibility to relate the different disciplines (by having common systemic principles); (2) the capability to leverage on discipline-specific knowledge (by using the vocabulary and the heuristics of each discipline) and (3) to be more efficient in solving problems (by benefiting from the problem solving techniques developed in systems thinking). SEAM is currently applied in master courses and consulting. Consulting is done for start-ups developing their business and technology strategies and for large companies having service-oriented architecture projects.

Prior to joining EPFL, Alain Wegmann worked for 14 years with Logitech in software development/engineering management (Switzerland, Taiwan, US), manufacturing (Taiwan) and marketing (US). When he left Logitech, Alain Wegmann was engineering vice-president and marketing director for large accounts.

ANNOTATED BIBLIO

1. (Academic) Overview of the SEAM method:

This paper presents the foundations behind SEAM. In particular, it introduces the systemic modeling paradigm on which SEAM is built. Reading this paper is useful for people who want to understand the paradigm (i.e. set of principles) underlying SEAM. However, it is not necessary to read this paper to use SEAM.

On the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Methodology (SEAM)
Wegmann, Alain
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems p.483-490 , 2003

2. Example of SEAM for Business:

This paper illustrates the use of SEAM for Business to analyze the WWW communication strategy of a consulting company. This illustrates how SEAM can be applied to model the relations to the customers as well as the business strategies. This model can then drive, for example, the redesign of the company web site.

Early Requirements and Business-IT Alignment with SEAM for Business
Wegmann, Alain; Julia, Philippe; Regev, Gil; Perroud, Olivier; Rychkova, Irina
15th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, New Delhi, India, October 15-19th, 2007

3. Example of SEAM for Enterprise Architecture:

This paper illustrates the use of SEAM for EA in the context of a company that needs to align the business and the IT strategies. We present an enterprise model that spans from business down to IT. Such models are used in consulting and in teaching. The second paper presents our course on this topic.

Business-IT Alignment with SEAM for Enterprise Architecture
Wegmann, Alain; Regev, Gil; Rychkova, Irina; Lê, Lam-Son ; De La Cruz, José Diego; Julia, Philippe
11th IEEE International EDOC Conference (EDOC 2007), Annapolis, Maryland, 15-19 October 2007

and:

Teaching Enterprise and Service-Oriented Architecture in Practice
Wegmann, Alain; Regev, Gil; de la Cruz, José Diego; Lê, Lam-Son; Rychkova, Irina
Journal of Enterprise Architecture, vol. N/A, num. N/A (2007), p. N/A, 2007

4. Example of SEAM for Software:

This paper illustrates how SEAM can be used to model a software architecture. We present the SEAM model of the PetShopStore (case study intially used to document J2EE architectures).

From Platform-Independent to Platform-Specific Models Using SEAM: J2EE Pet Store
Irina Rychkova; Regev, Gil; Wegmann, Alain
11th IEEE International EDOC Conference (EDOC 2007), Annapolis, Maryland, 15-19 October 2007

For more information, please visit: http://lamswww.epfl.ch

CURRENT WORK

Development of methods and tools for "strategic thinking" and "business / IT alignment". The current research topics are: service level management, alignment of business and IT strategies, IT systems to support coopetitive strategies, and integration of service/goal/process models. The research is currently funded by EPFL, SNF and industrial partners.

EXPERTISE

Marketing, enterprise architecture, software engineering, system thinking, requirements engineering.