Chapter 11 - Systems Development and Project Management

1.Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management:

The triple constraint refers to the assessment and making time, scope and cost of project changes. The value to project management is that it helps a person to comprehend on how resources are to be assigned in bigger view.



2.Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning:

Two primary diagrams that are frequently used include a PERT chart which shows the tasks and relationships of a project. The PERT chart comprises of two things: a dependency and a critical path. The other diagram is a Gantt chart where it is a chart that shows when each task is due to completed. The names of tasks are placed on the vertical side of the chart and the time in which the task is to be completed is placed horizontally.






3.Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success:

When ensuring success a project manager must focus on:
• Managing People
• Managing Communications
• Managing Change

4.Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed:
Below is a table that I created which illustrates the reasons as to why projects either succeed or fail.



Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Model Advisor. 2003-2007. Minute Man (Pert Chart). http://www.modeladvisor.com/general_use/ms_office_tools/project_management/minuteman/images/pertLarge.jpg. Date Accessed: 30th May 2010.

Seah. 2009. Practical Tidbits for IT Project Management. http://ams4pm.amseah.com/?p=48. Date Accessed: 29th May 2010.

Search Software Quality. 2006-2010. Gantt Chart. http://www.mydeskdrawer.com/projectmanagement/images/gantt_chart.jpg. Date Accessed: 30th May 2010.

Chapter 9 - Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence

1. What is your understanding of CRM?

CRM is the management of all aspects of customer relationships within an organisation. It is the intention of retaining good customers and allows profits to be decreased. Through customer relationship management it is less in cost to retain customers rather than searching for newer customers.


An example of Customer Relationship Management within an organisation.

2. Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management:




3.Describe and differentiate CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments:

With regards to sales departments they computerise sales process and help sales people direct their jobs for example calendars, appointments, meetings and presentations. Sales departments tend to be more interested in contact management. Marketing departments tend to focus on campaign management; they view costs with a campaign, who their target market is and whether they are able to decide a return on investment for various campaigns.

4. How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

They could do this through using list generators. List generators are able to provide information on precise features of an organisation e.g. a marketing campaign would have list of customers in a geographic area and it can to arrange the lists of each customer in an area. Other strategies include campaign definition, planning and systems and cost sell or up sell.

5. Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem:

If there is too much data an organisation may have limited knowledge on where data is or who their competitors may be.Hence may not be unable to make the best strategic implementation due to insufficient tools to back up data and support decision making to their strategic goals. The solution approach that they could take is business intelligence where it helps an organisation make decisions. Functional areas of an organisation can make decisions where they can be able to see more data analysis and reduce the latency of information in making good decisions.

6. Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses:

Business Intelligence refers to the tools and analysis that provide access to data for strategic decision making in an organisation for example data miming. Business intelligence has a value to an organisation in that it can be a whole myriad of things and can be used for many different aspects such as PivotTable on Microsoft Access. Business Intelligence is used for any tood that gives a longer length assortment of decision making and encourages types of decision making such as patterns and trends.





7. What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data miming?

The two possible outcomes a company could get from data miming is that it can increase profits and allow an organisation to have better sales and confined resources. Another two outcomes include cluster and statistical analysis. Cluster analysis is the searching of equal or non equal but alike data in the many types of databases. However to undertake the cluster analysis, behavioural traits need to be clearly identified through physically partitioning the individual information into set groups. Statistical analysis assesses the data trends through the assistance of a regression analysis and statistics. Statistical analysis gives opportunity to workers in an organisation a large variety of statistical capabilities in order to construct things such as statistical models, the examination of model’s assumptions and validity and the comparison and contrasting the number of models to identify which is the better alternative for an issue within an organisation.


An example of a Cluster Analysis
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8243747997517258236&postID=89069071603267511


Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

ETL - Tools Info. 2006-2010. Business Intelligence - Data Warehouse. http://etl-tools.info/en/bi/datawarehouse_concepts.htm. Date Accessed: 30 May 2010.

Execution - M.H. 2010. Data Miming Techniques - Propensity Modelling (Cluster Analysis). http://www.executionmih.com/data-mining/propensity-cluster-association-patterns.php Date Accessed: 30 May 2010.

SFGTV's Channel. 2007. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QvzxFJ_wc8. Date Accessed: 30 May 2010.

Chapter 8 - Operations Management and Supply Chain

1.Define the term operations management:

This refers to the management of systems or processes that change resources (such as human resources) into goods and services.

2.Explain operation’s management’s role in business:

The role of operation management is to direct the main procedures that are used to make manufactured goods and product services.

Other types of roles include:

• Forecasting
• Scheduling
• Managing inventory
• Motivating employees
• Assuring quality processes
• Dealing with global locations or relocations


3.Describe the correlation between operation’s management and information technology:

Information technology is used as an assistance tool in an organisation making business decisions. These include making decisions about productivity, costs, flexibility, and quality and customer satisfaction. Operational management information systems are critical for an organisation as the organisation itself needs to make the appropriate, knowledgeable systems. IT allows operational management to determine what goals and objectives an organisation has. The end result of a decision is that there are many options that create an influence on revenues and expenses.

4.Explain supply chain management and its role in a business:

Supply chain management refers to the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain and effectiveness. Supply chain management’s role in a business is to manage the supply change, raw materials, productions, both goods and services which is significant.



5.List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain:

The five components of a typical supply chain include the supplier, manufacturer, distributor, retailer and customer.

6.Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain:

A supply chain refers to the acquirement of raw materials or products from indirect or direct persons. Information technology’s allows a constant smooth run of information or products among customers, transportation providers and suppliers which in turn allows the supply chain to be effective.

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Connect Systems. 2010. Supply Chain Management. http://www.connectsystems.eu/index.php?id=303. Date Accessed: 30th May 2010.

Chapter 7 - Networks and Wireless

1.Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology:

The benefits of using wireless technology within an organisation is that it provides faster and better services, provides a global reach to employees and customers and has the ability to communicate and share information.

2.Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP:

The benefits of VoIP for a business are as follows:
• Delivering service costs are lowered
• Improves response and restoration times
• Easier interoperability with systems
• Easier application integration
• A variety of choices
• Reduction in costs
• New applications

3.Compare LANs and WANs:

A LAN is where it connects a group of computers close to each other e.g. school, home, office i.e. Notre Dame, Sydney; whereas a WAN is a connection to two or more areas in geographical context e.g. state, province, country such as Notre Dame in Fremantle and Broome.


An example of a LAN (Local Area Network)


An example of a WAN (Wide Area Network)



4.Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective:

RFID refers to using passive or active tags which are the shape of a chip that puts in identifiers that are differentiated. Information is then transmitted to electronic readers. In order to make the supply chain more effective, businesses can incorporate RFID technologies with regards to planning and execution. An organisation can put tags on things such as cases or pallets that are sent from the manufacturer itself to the distributor. This way it enables distribution places to not only monitor their shipping of supplies but also allows the organisation to monitor the supply chain and make sure that there is sufficient supplies on shelves.

5.Identify the advantages and disadvantages of deploying mobile technology:
Below is a table that I created, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of mobile technology:





Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Microsoft Tech Net. 2010. Deploying Microsoft Project Server for Users in Distributed Geographic Locations. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751420.aspx. Date Accessed: 30th May 2010.

Unisma College. 2005-2007. Lan (Local Area Network). http://www.unisma.com/streamyx-lan.php. Date Accessed: 30th May 2010.

Chapter 6 - Databases and Data Warehouses

1.List, describe and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information:
• Accuracy –Spelling of name? Correct address information such as postcode?
• Completeness – Number of street, type of street, organisation, company
• Consistency – Sum of columns; do totals = true total?
• Uniqueness – What is the differentiation?; primary key, entity etc
• Timeless – Is the information up to date?

2.Define the relationship between a database and a database management system:

A database refers to the upholding of information with regards to things such as:
• Objects (inventory)
• Events (transactions)
• People (employees)
• Places (warehouses)
A database management system however is the management of a database and also queries the database. This system allows us to create query designs and reports through the software of Microsoft Access.



3.Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database:
It allows the organisation to make good strategic business decisions and comprehend website congestion such as customers. It is also a benefit in that an organisation can increase flexibility, scalability, and information security. It is strongly recommended that businesses use databases as if they don’t, they would need to put their data on separate Microsoft Word documents and hence would be time consuming.

4.Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model:
The relational database model implements information into a two-dimensional table that are in connection to one another through rational means.

5.Describe the benefits of a data driven website:
Benefits include:
• Development
• Content management
• Future expandability
• Minimisation of human error
• Cutting production and update costs
• More efficient
• Improved stability
• Can investigate information easily and confidently
• Increases customer satisfaction

6.Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organisation:
Database warehouse refers to the large collation of many types of databases such as sales, markeing, human resources etc whereas a data mart is where there is a smaller subset of database information. Organisations are able to disperse from transferred data and obtain business intelligence on things that are not identical to one another.

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Chapter 5 - Enterprise Architecture

1. What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Information architecture is where and how important information is maintained and secured e.g. customer’s records. It is the overall plan of how the organisation is going to configure IT systems. Information infrastructure composes of the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment that when combined, it is a backbone for the business in achieving its goals.

2. Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture:

An organisation can implement an information architecture through the following:
• Back up and recovery
• Disaster recovery
• Information security
• Making IT affordable
• Making information architecture more responsive
• Improve productivity
• Create competitive advantages
• Generate growth
• Generate new revenue systems
• Optimise supply chain

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture:

1. Flexibility – In order to adapt to changes, businesses must be flexible.
2. Scalability – A system needs to be able to become accustomed to risen requirements such as industry, market and economic growth within an organisation.
3. Reliability – Are all systems working properly? Is the correct information given? If information is not sufficient or undependable it can create an impact on important business decision making.
4. Availability – This is where systems can be accessible by members of the organisation.
5. Performance – Assesses the system’s speed of a process or transaction. If performance is low, this can have negative consequences of the business in general.




4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture:

A service oriented architecture is using different systems to meet different demands. A service does the same thing over and over again and can be applied to many situations.

5. What is an event?

This refers to something in a system that tells something has happened and provokes events to occur. It is also the locating of threats and opportunities and informs the appropriate people to take action on the information.

6. What is a service?

This is where an organisation has to engage to an audience and if a service wants productivity their service needs to be reusable. This contains directions which in return can be used again and is in similarity to a software product.

7. What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure?

There are two ways in which companies can use emerging technologies to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure in an organisation. These predominantly compose of virtualisation and grid computing. Virtualisation is described as structure for the portioning of computer resources into numerous implementation surroundings. Through the utilisation of virtualisation, all aspects of the organisation such as people, processes and technology are able to come together and work in a competent manner which will in turn amplify levels in terms of service. Grid computering refers to the combining of geographically spreaded computering, storage and network resources that synchronise to bring enhanced performance abilities, better service quality, improved operations and data access in which can be effortlessly accessed.


Benefits of Virtualisation in an organisation.


Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. 2010. Business Driven Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Highlander Direct. 2007. Virtualisation.http://www.highlanderdirect.com/virtualisation.htm. Date Accessed: 30th May 2010.

Chapter Four - Ethics and Information Security

1. Explain the ethical issues surrounding technology:

The ethical issues surrounding technology comprise of:

Intellectual property - This refers to an individual's rights which protects their efforts, skills and knowledge.

Fair use doctrine - These are situations where you use someones property but you don;t make profits.

Pirated software - This refers to software in which is copyright being used illegally e.g. running desktops that are unlicensed.

Counterfeit software - This is where a software has been duplicated and sold so it looks like the original software i.e. claiming it as your own software.



2. Describe the relationship between an 'email privacy policy; and an 'internet use policy':

An email privacy policy is a corporate email system in which it can be checked and determines how the email system in an organisation is going to be used e.g. not allowing employees to send spam emails to colleagues. An internet use policy is a guide on how to use the internet.

3. Summarise the five steps to creating an information security plan:

The picture below in which I created provides the five steps in creating an information security plan:




4. What do the terms; authentication and authorisation mean, how do they differ, provide some examples of each of them:

Authentication is ensuring an individuals identity by them claiming who they say they are i.e. something the user is e.g. biometrics, something the user has e.g. smart or token cards and something the user knows e.g password. It differs to authorisation as authorisation means that you are giving someone you consent to do something that is allowing the right people to access the right areas in the internet e.g. a member in an organisation being part of the marketing group which allows them to access marketing resources.

5. What are the five main types of security risks, suggest one method to prevent the severity of risk:

The following are the five types of security risks and the mechanisms that should be put in place:

Human error - Standards of training

Technological Failure - Robust systems, backups

Natural disaster - Disaster recovery; all organisations should have a disaster recovery plan and in it should be things like a communication plan, location of backup data, business continuity etc.

Deliberate acts - These could include hackers, disgruntled employees, viruses and spams

Management failures - This is where there is no back up in place and there is a lack of documentation and a suggested method would be to have some support training for managers in place.





References:

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. Business Driven Information Systems. 1st Australian/New Zealand Edition. Mc Graw Hill. 2010.

kerls1982's Channel 2009, YouTube, viewed 4 April 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emv88g0LVbw

Chapter 3 Questions: E-Commerce

What is an IP address? What is it's main function?

An IP address is where every computer is given a different number out of the whole world. The main function of an IP address is to allow computers to communicate with each other. An IP address is also referred to as Transmission Control Protocol or Internet Protocol.

What is Web 2.0? How does it differ from Web 1.0?

Web 2.0 is also known as a live web. This is where users join forces and establish their very own material. Web 1.0 however is a one way published web.

What is Web 3.0?

This is a new concept that changes a web into a database and is an evolutionary path to artificial intelligence. An example of this is through the use of tagging people in a photo.





Describe what different methods an organisation can use to access information:

An organisation can use the following to access information:

One method that a business can use to access information is through the organisation's intranet. This is a private section on the internet that only employees or employers can access if they wish to seek information or software applications. Another method is through using using portals as it is a webpage that combines many systems to appear on one page. A business can also use the extranet where it is likewise an intranet but allows other firms, appropriate groups and executive partners on the intranet to share certain types of data.

What is eBusiness? how does it differ from eCommerce?

This is where a business is done through the internet. Customer service and collaborating with business partners is also conducted, not just buying and selling goods. E-commerce refers to buying and selling goods over the internet.

List and describe the various eBusiness models:



List 3 metrics you would use if you were hired to assess the effectiveness and the efficiency of an eBusiness website:

1. Determine how long people spend on a site
2. Obtain demographic information
3. Utilise e-Business data to identify at what times people buy or sell
something over the internet so that the business can market.

Outline 2 opportunities and 2 challenges faced by companies doing business online:

Below is a chart illustrating both opportunities and challenges that companies could potentially face whilst doing business online.



References:

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. Business Driven Information Systems. 1st Australian/New Zealand Edition. Mc Graw Hill. 2010.

davidEPN's Channel 2007, YouTube, viewed 4 April 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsNcjya56v8.

explainingcomputers' Channel 2007, YouTube, viewed 4 April 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BAXvFdMBWw&feature=fvw

Business Driven Information Systems - Chapter 2 (Strategic Decision Making)

Business Information Technology - Chapter 2 Weekly Questions!!

1. Define TPS and DSS and explain how an organisation can use these systems to make decisions and gain competitive advantage:

TPS is abbrieviated to Transaction Processing System which deals with the operating area of a business. It is dealt with by analysts at a lower level in the organisation. DDS is also referred to Decision Support System and it assists managers or executives in a decision making process.

An organisation uses these systems as the transaction processing system gives data to the decision support system hence they narrow down the details from the TPS and allows employers to make efficient decisions in the organisation.

2. Describe three quantitative models typically used by decision support systems:

Sensitivity Analysis - Baltzan,Phillips,Lynch and Blakey (2010) describe Sensitivity Analysis as "The study if the impact that changes in one (or more) parts of the model."

What-If Analysis - When a change is monitrored through a belief on a suggested mechanism.

Goal-Seeking Analysis - Where it locates the essential input to reach a particular goal.

3. Describe a business process and their importance to an organisation:

A business process is a set of activities that are used to accomplish certain tasks. This is important to an organisation as it helps them to look out for things such as tasks that are replicated and conjoined tasks in which they can get rid of to find processes that are well orderly runned. A business process also enables an organisation to achieve a set number of goals.

4.Compare business process improvement and business process re-engineering:

Below, I have created a table comparing business process improvement and business process re-engineering:


5. Describe the importance of business process modelling (or mapping) and business process models:

The importance is that business modelling shows the process in a manageable way and it consoles accuracy. Awareness is concentrated on the process model system and gives a highly effective interpretation. The importance of business process models is that it contains diagrams that illustrate a set of activities in a chronological order and analysis can be done on whether the organisation is achieving their goals and objectives.

An example of a business process model:



References:

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakely. 2010. Business Information Systems. Mc Graw Hill. Sydney, Australia.

Snell, J. 2001. The Web services insider, Part 5: Getting into the flow. IBM.http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-ref5/process1.gif. Date Accessed: 4 April 2010.

Week and Chapter One Blog: Business Driven Information Systems

1.Explain information technology's role in business and describe how you measure success:

Information technology aims to provide businesses with opportunities along with challenges. If one picked up business related material they will find that there will be a myriad of terminology deriving from information technology.

Information technology's role is to provide the essential communication and provide strong intellect particularly in a business environment. It has the potential to in turning a normal sized business into a large successful organisation.

It is would be highly complex to measure information technology's success and the only mechanism that businesses can use is metrics. These include using Key Performance Indicators, Efficiency and Effectiveness IT metrics and Benchmarking.


2.List and describe each of the forces in Porter's Five Forces Model:

Buyer Power - This is where there are many choices of what buyers are able to purchase hence allows the power to rise and when they have very little choices their power is low.

Supplier Power - When there are little choices which therefore makes the buyers power high and when buyers have many choices their power is low.

Threats of substitute products or services - Where there are many choices to either the service or product the threat is of substituting is substantially high however where there are little choices the threat is low.

Rivalry among existing competitors - Rivalry is most likely to occur if there is intense competition however unlikely to occur if the market is content.



I attempted to make the screen smaller but I couldn't so I'm sorry the screen is abit cut off!!



Rae, GD. n.d. Porter 5-Forces Model. Graham D. Rae Associates Ltd Project Management, IT Consultancy, Marketing. Date Accessed: 4 April 2010.


3.Describe the relationship between business processes and value chain:

The business process makes sure that tasks are achieved by setting specific activities whereas a value chain is used to not only assess the business process but the product or service has value for consumers being added.

4.Compare Porter's three generic strategies:

Below is a graph that I compiled to compare Porter's three generic strategies:




References:

Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey. Business Driven Information Systems. 1st Australian/New Zealand Edition. Mc Graw Hill. 2010.

Harvard Business' Channel 2007, YouTube, Viewed 4 April 2010.

Rae, GD. n.d. Porter 5-Forces Model. Graham D. Rae Associates Ltd Project Management, IT Consultancy, Marketing. http://www.grahamrae.net/porter.htm.Date Accessed: 4 April 2010.