Product Description: Business Driven Technology discusses various business initiatives first and how technology supports those initiatives second. The premise for this unique approach is that business initiatives should drive technology choices. Every discussion first addresses the business needs and then addresses the technology that supports those needs
Great Textbook I had to purchase this book for a masters levels class, and was initially shocked at how expensive it was. Don't let the price tag put you off - this is the most comprehensive textbook on Information Technology I've come across in a long time.
It is very well presented, with lots of diagrams / photos to support the text. It also documents modern organizations to give it more of a 'real' feel.
Needless to say, I have decided not to see this one back; that should be reason enough for you to believe that I think it's good!
A Creative Approach But Some "Tweaking" Needed Business Driven Technology by Haag, Baltzan, and Phillips is quite a new textbook (1st edition in 2005) designed for undergraduate Information Systems courses. I am one of the "lead customers" of this textbook and have been using it for two semesters.
Contrary to traditional textbooks, it is a modular textbook. More specifically, the entire textbook is divided into three modules. The first module, Chapters, covers the topics in general. The second module, Business Plug-ins, gives more in-depth insights into the applications of Information Systems concepts to contemporary business environments. Finally, the last module, Technical Plug-ins, offers detailed technical information about the Information Systems tools covered in the first two modules. This modular approach is especially important for instructors today because they desperately seek undergraduate textbooks that include well-defined chapters. Moreover, the time necessary to cover all the topics in Information Systems is quite limited--usually a semester. The modular approach is also useful because it can satisfy diverse needs of instructors: some may want to concentrate on more "soft" issues, such as strategic use of IT or e-commerce, and some want to cover more "hard" topics such as telecommunications.
On the flip side, the book has some flaws that need to be urgently addressed before its second version hits the market. Apart from some minor editorial mistakes and unnecessary repetitions throughout the book, the case study questions at the end of each chapter should be rewritten. These case studies indeed reflect the main points from the chapters but the questions are either too general to discuss in class with students, or they are too simple to draw some conclusions. I am not requesting writing state-of-the-art questions but it will be a good idea to revisit them, and try to find a balance between simplicity and complexity.
Another concern is the scope of the textbook. Rather than trying to cover all Information Systems topics in a textbook, it may be better to focus on certain topics. In this regard, it may be necessary to remove the Plug-in T3 (Decision Analysis Tools in Excel), and T5 (Touring Access). Possibly due to space constraints, these parts of the book are not the best resource if an instructor wants to include some hands-on exercises in class. Especially, the Plug-in T5 has several errors, e.g., the first row in Figure T5.17 on page 456 is missing and it affects all the following figures in the plug-in. Given these concerns, instructors may adopt, for example, Shelly Cashman's Microsoft Access book for this purpose (at least until the 2nd version of the book).
A final concern is about the slides of the textbook. It is a common problem in all business textbooks is that the slides seem to be just copy-pasted from the main text of the book. This will probably force some instructors, like me, to rewrite them all and add considerable amount of information to them that is already in the textbook but not reflected in the slides! In this regard, rather than outsourcing the slide production to third-party editors, it will be much better if the authors themselves edit the slides (and it is an open invitation to all authors of business textbooks out there).
Overall, I definitely suggest adopting this textbook if your student profile is very diverse and you are looking for an introductory level Information Systems textbook that offers well-defined alternatives--there are not so many...
Dr. Yasin Ozcelik www.misworld.org
A Superb Study A great textbook, very interesting read, I loved the examples and it was easy to follow, yet remarkably astute. Well done all around, this is a must for today's business place.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
