The Critical Problems of Internet Systems Development: Implications for Teaching of Internet Technologies

The author has regularly taught a graduate level seminar on Technology Management. Beginning Fall of 1999 this seminar has been taught as an Internet Systems Development course. During its prior non-Internet emphasis the author conducted two DELPHI Questionnaire studies (three questionnaires each) to establish the relative importance of the top technology management problems. The studies resulted in numerous papers and several refereed journal articles, and also strongly influenced the content of the graduate seminars taught. The author and a colleague now have conducted a similar-methodology Delphi Questionnaire study about Internet Systems Development problems, with about 150 separate problems being assessed on-line for the first questionnaire. The purposes of the DELPHI study are to identify the major Internet systems development problems, then measure their importance relative to each other, and finally to explore insights provided by the findings about the problems. The results of this in-process study affect the structure and content of the author’s Fall 2000 MBA seminar about Internet Systems Development. This ISECON 2000 paper describes the results of the DELPHI study and explains how these results impact the author’s seminar. The paper also examines the implications of the study’s findings for the more general areas of teaching IT and Internet Systems topics.