Crisis: The Adventures of an IT Leader, Teaching Note

"The Adventures of an IT Leader" invites readers to "walk in the shoes" of a new CIO, Jim Barton, as he spends a difficult year learning effective information technology leadership, sidestepping the pitfalls that make the CIO job the most volatile, high-turnover job in the business. This chapter presents a series of hot-button issues provoked by a DoS (Denial of Service) attack on the IVK network, and marks a turning point in the 18-chapter series. Barton faces a crisis that magnifies several difficulties IT leaders face in relationship to the rest of the organization, including the need to manage technical complexity and the challenges of working with a senior management team and internal users who neither have much background in IT nor naturally want to engage in IT problems.