SDB4313z Week 5 Structure of Enterprises and Culture

Before going into this chapter, students should have now appreciate EA. EA is not system development. What an organization says that it has an EA program, you know what that some initiatives have been done that integrates and align the business strategy, its business and technology. When a company implements ERP, that is one step into moving into EA. Hopefully that ERP is align with the organizations business and strategy.

This topic is about two things. First, structure of enterprises. Students are being introduced to Leavit Diamond, Parson/Thompson Model and Organizational model. The three models were presented because these are the models mentioned in the textbook. From this model, the author of the textbook relates it with the EA3 Cube Framework. In a way, knowing the structure of the enterprise is important because it helps as to map the structure with the framework.

The second topic was about culture. I conducted an activity using Padlet. I asked the students to write the culture that they feel exists in UTP. Students use this opportunity to its fullest :-)) Late picking up calls, staff not in the counter when they need them and so on etc. But there are also response that concerns themselves e.g it is a culture in UTP to come late to class or submit assignment late and so on. Anyway, the objective of this activity is to see that culture is something that is hidden. It is about someone's beliefs and values. Obviously some of the responses in Padlet were not really culture per se. Secondly, I asked why is it that knowing culture is important. Next, what the students should do, is to relate that with EA. Why is that knowing culture is important in EA? Culture is about people. In EA, changes bound to happen. It is a fact that people have difficulties in changing their ways of doing things. As an EA, we have to appreciate and try to come with ways that could manage that change.

I am not able to cover change management in lecture but there is a question on change management in the tutorial exercises. So, that covers it.

Tutorial
For the tutorial, I asked the students to get together in a group of 4. Two students will do question 1 until 5 and the remaining will do question 6 until 8. Once they are done, the students will explain their answers to each other. The intention is that for the students to interact with one another and to explain their findings. I believe that if a student attempt to explain their findings to a friend, the student will understand better. The goal is for the student to understand not to complete the exercise the quickest.

While trying to give comments on the student's work, I noticed that a few groups have the same answer for Q8. Copying and pasting. The questions were not answered properly even. I suspect the students do not understand what is expected of the question. Only one group answers Q8 perfectly. Need to think of other strategies to ensure that the students participate as I imagine them to be.