Module 2

The case that you will use for this and the following two modules is another case that is coincidentally also Canadian in origin but in a very different business environment—the aluminum business (spelled here “aluminium” in the British fashion—you may use whichever spelling you choose.) It describes the analysis of the company’s IT systems and management performed by a new vice president of corporate information technologies, in all its complexity and magnificent variety. Throughout this case, issues of hardware, software, and management are intertwined, just as they are in real corporate life. One of your tasks will be to disentangle some of these issues for separate consideration in light of what you know and need to know. As we noted in our course overview, it’s taken for granted that hardware, software, and management (sometimes referred to as “wetware”) are all involved in a complex sociotechnical dance in which changes in any one element inevitably call forth changes in the others—preferably planned, but often unplanned, and not infrequently unanticipated. Thus, while your focus in this module will be primarily on hardware and networking, you’ll inevitably find yourself thinking about other dimensions of the problems as well. That’s all to the good, but try to keep a focus on the primary issues in each of these three modules. There’s plenty of time to concentrate on issues of integration as the course wraps up.