2nd Semester courses

For corporate enterprises working in an increasingly digitalized environment, IT investments and IT-based systems and processes are essential. The choice to forego such investments is no longer available to businesses and other groups. Organizations may suffer catastrophic consequences if they decide not to invest in IT or if they invest in the wrong kind of technology. The benefits of investing in digital IT systems and related processes have been enormous for many businesses. The returns on many other companies' significant investments in IT have been marginal. Why is it that some firms are better at leveraging their investments in IT systems than others? These unequal effects of IT investments, also known as the "IT productivity paradox," have long piqued the interest of both researchers and practitioners.

Although some have suggested that IT is merely a commodity with minimal strategic value (driven by the growth of phenomena like cloud computing and BYOT, among other recent trends), others contend that strategic value does not originate from only owning the IT assets. They argue that businesses gain value from their IT investments by building out superior orchestration skills for IT investment and deployment processes, as well as the skills to effectively manage and apply technological and human resources to accomplish the strategic and operational goals of the company.

Any IT investment should have as its primary goal the creation and delivery of value that the client is prepared to pay for or fund. In this course, we hold that viewpoint.