Given the above definition of a system and its related components, and given that an IT system is necessarily sociotechnical, what might be the basic components of a core IT system? As we have remarked above, this depends on the way the system is defined by an observer. But we would suggest that any IT system will have three core components:
The basic structure of an IT system with these three core components, showing their influences on each other, might look something like Figure 1.
This course will make the case throughout that all three of these components are important in considering the nature of an IT system and in making it successful. It is not sufficient to consider the technology as the core of the system and the organisational and people aspects as secondary – they are all three interrelated.
10 minutes
Do you think these are sufficient components of an IT system? What other components might you want to add? Write down these additional components.
You may well have come up with other components as being important, but in our view they can usually be seen as subsystems of the three main components of Technology, Organisation and People.
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