Through our SIS education and research efforts, we aspire to make significant contributions to business process innovation through the architecture, design and deployment of information systems in enterprise settings.

We believe that effective design and use of business IT solutions is the result of finding the appropriate balance between business process and user needs, information technology capability, economic value creation, cost containment and business and organisational risk management. We want our students to be competent in analyzing all of these dimensions of an IT enabled business solution, in articulating these trade-offs, and in making, executing and testing their design related decisions.

A solution architect identifies, balances and resolves design forces from many perspectives, including system stakeholders and system developers. We want to accelerate our students’ evolution into creative and competent business solution architects and designers who know how to shape, structure and manage business information system project teams and outputs. We want our students to take on responsibility for leading team efforts to create early iterations of the solution design, business case, project plan and pilot demonstrations.

Our students must know how to effectively and persuasively communicate about solution designs, business cases, project plans and pilot demonstrations to a wide variety of stakeholders. They must have the skills and confidence required to follow on projects approved, to keep these projects on sound footing despite changes in the environment, and to keep them moving forward to meet business and project management goals.

We also want our students to appreciate and practise the fundamental methods of scientific thinking, and to apply these critical thinking methods to our realm of business processes and information systems in enterprise settings.

Our curriculum, our partnerships with industry and our research efforts are designed to provide you with the experiencesthat will make this all possible.

We welcome you to the SMU School of Information Systems. If you become a member of our community, you will have been handpicked to architect the future of this school. We look forward to your contributions and to seeing you here.