Week 1 Discussion Comments

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Computer Specialists

Building a Team: There is a 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.