IASA IT ARCHITECTURE COMPETITION — 2016-2017
RECOGNIZING AND PROMOTING THE ART AND SCIENCE OF IT ARCHITECTURE
Iasa and the Puget Sound Association of IT Architects is excited to announce the second IT Architecture Competition for full-time undergraduate and graduate students.
Latest Headlines:
- Grand Finale on February 25, 2017 at REI IT Center.
- Speakers:
John Zachman, Founder and Chairman of Zachman International :: Paul Moulton, EVP & CIO of Costco Wholesale :: Julie Averill, CIO of REI :: Tony Bozzuti, SVP & CIO of F5 Networks :: Lori Salow Marshall, Founder of BYNDL & Entrepreuner
Hello, Undergraduate and Graduate Students!
Iasa is excited to announce the first IT Architecture Competition for full-time undergraduate and graduate students. The participants will be required to deliver an end-to-end architecture solution for a real world business problem. Each team will comprise of maximum 3 students from same or different universities. The duration of the competition will be approximate 21 weeks. Winning team will receive a $10,000 prize, and certificate of achievement.
Why do I participate?
- Opportunity to architect a solution for a real world problem
- Employment & internship opportunities in the greater Seattle area
- Mentoring with practicing architects from Costco, REI, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Nordstorm, F5 Networks Inc. and others
- $10,000 prize in addition to exposure, learning, and employment & internship opportunities
How do I participate?
- Form a team of maximum 3 students of ANY discipline from same or different universities
- Register a team for the competition
- Attend orientation & educational sessions from IT professionals
- Work closely with an assigned mentor — a praticing architect from the industry
- Develop architecture document comprised of Conceptual, Infrastructure, Information, Security & Software Architecture
- Deliver presentation to judges, IT professionals & students in the final event
Who will help me?
- Each team will be assigned with a mentor — a practicing architect from the industry, who will work closely with a team to help understand architecture and provide guidance.
- Mentors will be:
- Enterprise architect from Costco,
- Enterprie architect from REI,
- Solution architect from Amazon, etc.
Who will evaluate?
An independent expert panel comprising of Academia & highly experienced IT architects from the industry
Rules:
- Open to fulltime undergraduate & graduate students of ANY discipline
- Must complete all deliverables for the competition
- All deliverables are evaluated by a panel of eminent judges
- Evaluation will be a weighted sum of points for each deliverable
- Solution will be evaluated for innovativeness, realizability & originality
- All judges’ decisions are final
When & Where:
- Orientation & Educational Sessions: October 1-15, 2016
- 3 Deliverables: November, 2016 – February, 2017
- Final Presentation: February 15-25, 2017
- Final Event Venue: Greater Seattle Area
Become a Sponsor & Empower the Future of IT Architecture
Iasa IT Architecture Competition provides a unique opportunity to recognize and promote IT Architecture discipline. An opportunity for sponsors to get a view of architechture practices from an academic perspective as well as for the Universities to get a taste of real world architectural challenges. Sponsors will connect with aspiring IT professionals who can think creatively to solve a business problem, who can collaborate with others, and who work in a team environment.
Our 2015/2016 Sponsors:
- Costco Wholesale Corporation
- F5 Networks, Inc.
- Microsoft Corporation
- REI
For more information, please contact sponsor@iitarch.org.
Volunteering Opportunities
IT Architecture is an evolving profession and we are always looking for professionals eager to contribute to the community. There are multiple ways to contribute. You can help organize, build templates and artifact models, become a mentor, or help sponsorship.
Please contact volunteer@iitarch.org indicating your area of interest. We look forward to hearing from you.
The first Iasa IT Architecture Competition (2015-2016) was conducted from October 2015 through January 2016. There were 8 teams registered for this competition from 4 different schools across the country. The participants had to deliver the solution architecture for a problem provided by a large retail organization. Winning teams shared a total prize money of $9000 and received an individual certificate of achievement.
The goal of the architecture was “to enhance shopping experience of members by minimizing effort in purchase of items and the time spent at the register. This will also help the company reduce the number of cash registers thereby creating more floor space and making best use of resources.”
The key deliverables submitted by the teams were: Business Requirement Document, Conceptual Architecture, Information Architecture, Software Architecture, Security Architecture, and Technology Stack. These deliverables were evaluated by a panel of eminent judges from academia and industry.
The final evaluation included a presentation by each team at an open event in front of the panel of judges.
Each team worked with a mentor who was a practicing architect from one of the leading local companies. Students’ feedback showed that working of mentors was one of the key benefits of the competition.
Problem Statement
Enhance shopping experience of members by minimizing effort in purchase of items and the time spent at the register. This will also help the company reduce the number of cash registers thereby creating more floor space and making best use of resources.
Judging Criteria
- Innovation
- System Quality Attributes
- Realizable/Practicality
- Integration Considerations
- Architecture Document Submission
- Conceptual Architecture
- Infrastructure
- Information Architecture
- Security Architecture
- Software Architecture
- Business Requirements
- Technology Stack
- Industry Standards
- Standard Followed/Choices
- Industry References Followed
- Final Presentation
- Content
- Delivery
- Q&A
Deliverables
- Architecture Document Submission
- Conceptual Architecture
- Infrastructure
- Information Architecture
- Security Architecture
- Software Architecture
- Business Requirements
- Technology Stack
RULES OF THE COMPETITION
General:
- Only full-time undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to participate.
- Each team will be responsible for all their expenses related to the competition. This includes, but is not limited to, software tools & licenses, documentation, other IT resources, travel for the competition.
- Team members cannot be changed after registration is completed without explicit permission from the organizers.
- All the deliverables must be submitted within the given deadlines. Late submissions will not be included in the evaluation.
- Judges decisions will be final and binding for all evaluations.
- Any participating student must be a member of ONLY one team.
- Each team member will have to sign and submit waiver and indemnification document provided by the organization before first submission deadline.
- All work submitted by the team will become Intellectual Property of Iasa.
- Every team will be required to present at the final event in January 2016. This presentation can be done in-person or electronically.
Mentoring:
- Each team will be assigned a mentor. An email with mentor details will be sent separately.
- Mentor is provided with intention of guiding and providing feedback on the artifacts created by the team.
- Mentor will not work on any deliverables.
- Each team should work with their mentor to establish details for their collaboration.
Disqualification criteria:
- All work must be original contribution from the team. Any kind of plagiarism will result in disqualification from the competition.
- Any team member failing to sign and submit waiver and indemnification document will automatically disqualified the entire team.
Deliverables:
- Each team will be allowed only one submission per deliverable.
- No changes to any deliverables can be made after they are submitted.
- All material submitted must be original work of the team. Any violation of intellectual property will be the responsibility of the submitting team.
- Following deliverables are expected as a part of this competition. The templates for these will be provided to each team.
- Architecture Document, this should have following architecture perspective.
- Conceptual Architecture
- Information Architecture
- Software Architecture
- Security Architecture
- Business Requirement Document should be submitted along with assumptions/risks etc.
- Technology stack
Sample Documents
Sample Deliverables:
WINNING TEAMS
First Place: Team Seattle Boffins (Seattle University)
- Conor Leeds
- Hunter Hammond
- Jordan Callero
- Martina Ugwuh
- Sukhman Ghumman
Second Place: Team Skyscraper (University of Washington)
- Hongyuan Liu
- Shangyu Sun
- Xinyang Wang
- Xinyu Zhang
- Yu Zhang
Third Place: Team Fifth Dimension (University of Washington, Tacoma)
- Apoorva Balasubramanian
- Bharadwaj Narasimha
- Dheepak Chidambaram
- Kamatchi Devi Subramanian
- Shanthini Sivaraman
Attendees
CIO of REI Welcoming Teams
IASA President & Puget Sound Chapter President Openning the Event
Judges Interacting
Certificates
Trophies
Judging in Progress
HR Setting up a Booth
Signing for Internship
Panel Discussion
Student Sharing Their Experience
Mentors Sharing Their Experience
Judges Sharing Their Experience
Team Presentations
Joy of Winning
Thanks you Judges
Judges
FRANCIS GAN
Francis Gan, a 30 year information technology veteran, has over 25 years of experience in the software and information technology arenas.
RICHARD J. LEBLANC
Richard J. Leblanc, Jr. has over 35 years of experience as a teacher, researcher, and academic administrator. He has been a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Seattle University since 2008.
SAMEER KHERA
Sameer Khera is the Vice President of Enterprise Architecture and Mergers and Acquisitions team at Symantec Corporation. Sameer is an accomplished global leader having worked in India, UAE, Australia and US.
Mentors
ADVAIT SATHE
In his 19 years of experience Advait has performed various roles from being a developer, development lead at Microsoft. At T-Mobile for past couple of years he has been working on digital architecture, and upcoming Mobile App.
ANDY RUTH
Andy Ruth is passionate about growing future generations of IT leaders and workforce. He manifests this passion as a member of the Solutions Architecture team at AWS in worldwide headquarters, and as Managing Director of Sustainable Evolution.
CHRISTOPHER WILDT
Christopher Wildt offers a solid experience in Enterprise Strategy formulation and Architecture Capability establishment as well as leadership, coaching and mentoring in these areas.
MIHA KRALJ
Miha Kralj has been part of the IT industry and its development over the past three decades – as a consultant, architect, strategy advisor and executive.
MIKE HATCH
Mike Hatch has been in the IT industry since 1992, and has worked at software startups and 18 years at Microsoft in SAP Systems and Supply Chain. He currently works as an Enterprise Architect at REI.
MOHAN PRABHALA
Mohan Prabhala is currently an Enterprise Architect at Costco Wholesale. Prior to that he had been a Solution Architect.
PHILIP CRAMER
Strategic technology leader with 8 years of high performance team leadership and 21 years of successful business systems deployments for a global fortune 500 companies.
Contact Us:
General Information: info@iitarch.org
Sponsor: sponsor@iitarch.org
Mentor: mentor@iitarch.org
Volunteer: volunteer@iitarch.org