We're now through the holiday season and into Spring 2008.  I'm really looking forward to this session, and think that this "Management of IT" class is going to be a really positive experience for us all.

I'll talk more about the outline of the class next week during our first class.  The short version is that this course is designed to help you answer two questions:

1.    What are the fundamental principles behind IT systems?

2.    How can I use these systems to generate advantage in my business?

It'll be a very fast-paced class requiring you to write and present your arguments to the class.  There is a decent amount of understanding new concepts, but I'm more concerned about building your ability to analyze potential approaches and make recommendations. 

For the first week, you'll need to do the following:

1. Read the Porter and Short articles at http://conversation.cgu.edu/garrettn/page/IT+509+BT+Week+1

2. Log into http://conversation.cgu.edu with the login information I'll send in a separate email

3. Create an IT509_Week1 page (see attached instructions)

4. Respond to the question prompts in the IT509_Week1 page.

You will need to do this before 5pm next Tuesday.

This page holds work for the Fall 2008 IS 366a course. You can view other people's portfolios by clicking on the IS366a tag on the bottom of this page, or by editing this page and looking in the sidebar.

This page holds work for the Fall 2008 IS 305 course with Dr. Terry Ryan. You can view other people's portfolios by clicking on the IS305 tag on the bottom of this page, or by editing this page and looking in the sidebar.

Week 6

Review Slides

This point of this exercise is to review slides from a more traditional textbook-based course. For each of the following slide decks, you are to summarize your reaction.  Was the material presented useful?  Should we go over any of it in class? Are there concepts that you don't understand?

http://joandonovan.com/ISOM%20810%202004%20chapter02.ppt

http://joandonovan.com/ISOM%20810%202004%20chapter03.ppt

http://joandonovan.com/ISOM%20810%202004%20chapter04.ppt

http://joandonovan.com/ISOM%20810%202004%20chapter06.ppt

http://joandonovan.com/ISOM%20810%20chapter08.ppt

Online Video

Watch the rest of http://www.viddler.com/explore/waxpancake/videos/5/ (20 minutes or so on the end of the tape)

Watch http://www.viddler.com/explore/waxpancake/videos/6/ (55 minutes)

Reading

Read De Meyer.  What aspects of the article resonated with your experiences?  How can you use the suggestions to improve a project you are working on?

Week 7

Reading Summary

Read Jurison (below).  It's a long article, so plan on taking several hours.  Then, describe a project that you have worked on, using it to illustrate (either in a good or a bad way) the some of what you feel are the most most important points in the article.  This should be around 2 pages.

Assignment

This is the final assignment for the course.  I will emai you the case file.  You are required to

1. Briefly summarize company's position and major issues (1 page)
2. Propose a strategy for going opensource (2 pages)
3. Propose a strategy that retains ownership of the company’s software (2 pages)
4. Briefly, recommend a strategy. (1 page)

The page limits are illustrative, as I want you to spend most of your time on describing what the company should do.  For each strategy, describe what you recommend going forward and identify the advantages and disadvantages of that approach.  Be specific - there are multiple approaches the company can use with either strategy to mitigate its disadvantages.

Upload all of your assignments to this page.

I'm a 5th year student at Clarmemont Graduate university in the School of Information Systems and Technology.  This portfolio was last updated in Summer 2008.

My Research Interests lie in the area of social software, educational technology, and e-portfolios.

I maintain a widely-used plug-in for the Elgg social networking system called Folio, which provides an easy to use wiki and portfolio solution.

I work at Woodbury University as an Institutional Researcher.

I've posted a number of Publications online, as well as my CGU Qualifying Portfolio.

Several examples of my teaching are available.

For next week, I want to focus on technical topics.  We’ll talk about Open Source software and Websites.  As a result, the only reading is “The Cathedral & the Bazaar” by Eric Raymond (http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/).  As always, please follow the below procedure to upload your slides/handouts & reading summary.

1. Log into conversation.cgu.edu
2. Go to "My Pages"
3. Click on the "Add Page" link under the name of the currently displayed page
4. Select the "IT 509 Week 4" template
5. After clicking ok, you'll have the option to edit the newly created page.  Just follow the directions in the page.