Week 1 Discussion Comments

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Why in the core?

Electronic Medical Records: Several of you commented on Electronic Medical Records. In my opinion, some conversions to EMRs have been difficult because the design and/or implementation of the EMRs was staffed by computer specialists and administrators instead of by computer specialsts and doctors and nurses. This lead to systems that did a great job of gathering billing codes and doing accounting. Making clinical information easy to collect and retrieve was a second priority. Administrators that had a good understanding of systems would have staffed the project differently.

Core Business Processes: You mentioned that systems are now an integral part of core business processes. For example, when an airline dispatching computer crashes and automatic failover does not work, no airplanes from that airline can take off until the problem is fixed. This requires all managers to understand systems.

Why ask this now? You discussed that you could give a better answer to this question at the end of this course and I believe that this is true. However, I would prefer having "an answer" now so that you can think about this question as you approach each topic in the course. Why does the text book author think that I as a manager need to know this? Why does the professor think I need to know this or practice this?

Still learning at 72: One of you mentioned that your 72 year old father is still involved in learning about and selling technology. I am 68 years old and have found that i need to almost totally replace all my technical knowledge about every five years. Since you will be working with technology all of your career, you need to actively seek out ways to keep learning. May you find it as enjoyable as I have.

 

Computer Specialists

Building a Team: Many of your comments shows that you appreciate the need for both business and technical skills and that it is not a choice of "business" or "computer specialist". You will probably manage a project (or two or twenty) during your career. Many projects succeed or fail based on setting the right scope and getting the right staffing (skills).

Personal Opinion: Not all IT Specialists need an MBA or business knowledge. I would rather have a Network Specialist who had the appropriate CISCO certifications than one that had an MBA. CISCO is the leading IT Network hardware/software company and defines the way that most corporate networks are configured.

What is a Computer Specialist?: Think beyond a person that fixes printers or Excel problems or recovers lost passwords. Instead, think of specialists in Enterprise Resource Planning Systems such as SAP and database management systems such as Oracle, Learning Management Systems such as Canvas. Some IT specialits would be skilled in planning, building, and configuring data centers with racks and racks of servers and disk drives that fill a large building. Others are very skilled in certain programming languages or in managing complex software development projects

(optional) Please see this document for details. Look at the very last page (page 36) to see a list of about 60 different jobs that can be found in large IT departments and in other areas of some companies. If you want to know details about any of these 60 different jobs, look at the first 36 pages of the document.