The course is offered on the fifth term of the Bachelor's programme in Design of Information Systems, to exchange students and as a freestanding course.

Course description

This course deals with issues associated with strategic sourcing of information systems, both on a general and on a specific level. The main focus will be to understand and evaluate different sourcing strategies for information systems. The course describes various sourcing solutions for development and maintenance as well as management of information systems. The aim is to equip the students with the necessary knowledge in order to be able to assess and evaluate different sourcing strategies for information systems.

The purpose of the course is to give the students a deeper understanding of sourcing strategies in information systems, what possible solutions there are and when a specific solution is the best choice. Some of the issues that will be discussed in the course are: What solutions are there for a company that wishes to implement information systems? What advantages and disadvantages do the different solutions involve? What makes one solution fit better than the other?

During the course, the students will be introduced to a number of central theoretical perspectives which are being used to explain and understand when and why a certain sourcing solution for information systems is preferable. When the students have completed the course, they will be able to use this knowledge to grasp and evaluate different strategies for sourcing of information systems when contributing to sourcing decisions in companies and organisations, carried out in order to promote a positive organisational development.