An interactive demonstration of how a higher-ed institution can see its whole systems estate on one shared model — and reason about overlap, risk, recovery, and AI readiness from it.
A conceptual model of the enterprise systems landscape, built on the CAUDIT Higher Education Reference Models. It shows how systems, capabilities, and data can be organized and reasoned about — not any one campus.
The organizing idea is simple: record each system once, against every dimension, and organize around capabilities rather than products. A capability — what the institution does — outlives any system that delivers it, so it is the durable spine everything else hangs from. Once the data is captured that way, every question becomes a view of the same model rather than a fresh investigation.
The systems shown are representative examples. Real implementation varies with each campus's resources, priorities, governance, and policies. Treat it as a framework to adapt, not a prescription to copy.
The site moves from why the model matters, through the model itself, to how you apply it, what grounds it, and how it extends. New here? The homepage has a four-stop path.
Purpose, the Overview, Capabilities (the spine), Lifecycles, Workflows, and the interactive catalog — every system, from many views.
Decision plays on the Putting it to work hub — rationalize the portfolio, prioritize risk, scope AI, surface gaps, plan change, and more, plus Implementation and AI readiness.
The BRM, DRM, ARM, and TRM — the capability, data, application, and technology reference models the whole site draws on verbatim.
How other frameworks layer on the same spine — TBM, Lean Six Sigma, journey mapping, ITSM/ITIL, the EDUCAUSE catalog, NIST CSF, DAMA-DMBOK, and COBIT — each answering a question the core model raises but doesn't settle.
This page, and a Glossary of every term, model, and acronym used across the site.
HERM elements in the catalog — capability names and definitions, data topics, application and technology placements — come directly from the reference model. Operational attributes such as data classification, recovery tier, and AI profile are local extensions, defined here rather than in HERM.
CAUDIT Higher Education Reference Models (HERM) v3.2.0, December 2025.
HERM is published by CAUDIT under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The original content on this site (prose, local extensions, and templates) is also licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, since it builds on HERM.
Classification, criticality, and AI profile are added on top of HERM.
Built to show strategic and operational thinking on one page.
A demonstration of enterprise architecture for higher education — from the boardroom question down to the system record that answers it.
This is personal work. It is not an official publication of, or endorsed by, any employer or institution. Example systems are illustrative and do not describe any one campus.