System Development and Project Management

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

The triple constraint involves making tradeoffs between scope, time and cost for a project. It is inevitable in a project life cycle that there will be changes to the scope, time or cost of the project.
There is a high failure rate in IT projects between 30 to 70 per cent due to late delivery, exceeding budget, or not delivering what was agreed upon

 Increased Scope = increased time + increased cost
 Tight Time = increased costs + reduced scope
 Tight Budget = increased time + reduced scope.


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

 Project – temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result
 Project management – the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements, it implies;

3. Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success
A project manager must focus on managing three primary areas to ensure success:
 Managing people
 Managing communications
 Managing change

4. Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed.
 Failure to align project with organizational objectives
 Lack of executive sponsorship
 Lack of project management

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Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

1. What is your understanding of CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) manages all aspects of customer relation. The system developed by Siebel, allows the brokerage firm to trace each interaction with a customer or prospective customer and then provide services (retirement planning, for instance) tailored to each customer’s needs and interests. The system provides Schwab with a complete view of its customers, which it uses to differentiate serious investors from non- serious investors.

2. Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM – supports traditional transactional processing for day to day from office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers.
Analytical CRM – supports back office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal with the customers.
The primary difference between operational CRM and Analytical CRM is the direct interaction between the organisation and its customers.


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

Sales Departments uses Sales force automation (SFA) SFA is a system that automatically tracks all of the steps in the sales process. SFA products focus on increasing customer’s satisfaction, building customer relationships and improving product sales by tracking all sales information.
Marketing Departments uses the following three primary operational CRM technologies to increase customer satisfaction,
• List generator – compile customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns.
• Campaign management – guide users through marketing campaign performing tasks.
• Cross – selling and up – selling – is selling additional products or services to a customer.


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

Operational CRMs are suing different technologies to perform tasks for marketing, sales and customer service departments. Operational CRM is day to day – list generators- ability to provide information on specific aspects of business. For example list of customers for marketing in a articulator area, such as guiding users through campaigns, systems that can do up sell and cross sell.


5. Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather and provide access to and analyse data and information to support decision making efforts. Many organisations today find it next to impossible to understand their own strengths and weaknesses let their competitors alone, because the enormous volume of organisational data is inaccessible to all but IT department. Organisational data includes for more than simple fields in a clips, along with numerous new forms of data.

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

Problems - As businesses increase their reliance on enterprise systems such as CRM, they are rapidly accumulating vast amounts of data. Every interactions between departments or with the outside world, historical information on past transaction, as well as external market information, is entered into information systems for future use and access. Worldwide broadband connections are estimated to reach 21% of all households by the end of 2010, according to Garter Inc.
The amount of data generated is doubling every year and some think it will soon begin to double every month. Data are a strategic asset for a business; if the asset is not used, the business is wasting resources.
Solutions – in every organization, employees make hundreds of decisions each day. They can range from weather to give a customer a discount to whether to start production a part, launch another direct – mail campaign, order additional materials and so on. These decisions are sometimes based on facts, but mostly based on experience, accumulated knowledge and rule of thumb.


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

Data mining is the application of statistical techniques to find patterns and relationships among data and to classify and predict.
• Data mining represents a convergence of disciplines
• Data-mining techniques emerged from statistics and mathematics and from artificial intelligence and machine-learning fields in computer science.
Cluster analysis – a technique used to divide an information set into mutually exclusive groups such that the members of each group are as close together as possible to one another and the different groups are as far apart as possible.
CRM systems depend on cluster analysis to segment customer information and identify behavioural traits
Association detection – reveals the degree to which variables are related and the nature and frequency of these relationships in the information.
Market basket analysis – analysis web sites and check out statistics to identify buying behaviour and predict future behaviour. This is used for cross selling / up selling.

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Operations Management and Supply Chain

1. Define the term operations management

Operation management is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources (including human resources) into goods and services. Operations management is responsible for managing the core processes used to manufacture goods and produce service.

2. Explain operations management’s role in business
Scope of operation management ranges across the organisation and includes many interrelated activities, such as:
• Forecasting
• Capacity planning
• Scheduling
• Managing inventory
• Assuring quality
• Motivating and training employees
• Locating facilities
Reviewing the activities performed in an airline company makes it easy to understand how a service organization’s operation management team adds value. The company consists of the aeroplans, airport and maintenance facilities.

3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology
 Managers can use information technology (IT) to heavily influence operation management (OM) decisions including production, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One of the greatest benefits of IT on OM is in making operational decisions because OM experts considerable influence over the degree to which the goals and objectives of the organisations are realised. Most OM decisions involve many possible alternatives that can have verifying impacts on revenues and expenses. OM decisions, including :
 What: What resources will be needed and in what amounts?
 When: When should the work be scheduled?
 Where: Where will the work be performed?
 How: How will the work be done?
 Who: Who will perform the work?


4. Explain supply chain management and its role in a business
A supply chain is a network of organizations and facilities that transforms raw materials into products delivered to customers. Customers order from retailers, who in turn order from distributors, who in turn order from manufacturers, who in turn order from suppliers. The supply chain also includes transportation companies, warehouses, and inventories and some means for transmitting messages and information among the organizations involved.

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

Plan – this is the strategic portion of supply chain management. A company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services. A big piece of planning is developing a set of materials to monitor the supply chain so that it is efficient, costs less, and delivers high quality and value to customer.
 Source – companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products. Companies must also develop a set of pricing, delivery, and payment progresses with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving the relationships.
 Make – this is the step where companies manufacture their products or service. This can include scheduling the activities necessary for production, testing, packing, and preparing for delivery. This is by far the most metrics – intensive portion of the supply chain, measuring quality levels, and production output and worker productivity.
 Deliver – this step is commonly referred to as logistic. Logistic is the set of process that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of supplies from suppliers to customers. During this step, companies must be able to receive orders from customers, fulfil the orders via a network of warehouse, pick transportation companies to deliver the products, and implement a billing and invoicing system to facilitate payments.
 Return – this is typically the most problematic step in the supply chain. Companies must create a network for receiving detective and excess products and support customers who have problem with delivered products.

6. Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.
As companies evolve into extended organisations, the roles of supply chain participants are changing.
 Technology advances in the five supply chain management (SRM) components have significantly improved companies’ forecasting and business operations
 Integrated Systems provide companies with greater visibility over the supply chain inventory levels
 IT’s primary role is to create integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within an organization.

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Wireless Technology and Computer Network

1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology

Voice over IP - Allows the Internet to carry voice in digital format, call costs have dramatically decreased as the international calls are now Internet connections. It saves money in three ways;
 VOIP runs over the existing computer network
 Calls over the Internet do not attract Telecommunications charges.
 Customers can port their numbers between cariers

Networking business
 Provides the transparent exchange of information with suppliers, trading partners and customers.

 Reliability and security exchange information internally and externally via the Internet or other networks.

 Allow end – to end integration and provide message delivery across multiple systems, in particular, database, client and servers.

 Respond to high demands with suitable processing power and networking capacity.

 Serves as the integrator and transaction framework for both digital and businesses and traditional bricks and mortar businesses that went to leverage the Internet for any type of business.

Increasing the speed of business
Transactions can occur at different speeds. By speed we do not mean how fast the signal travels in terms such as kilometres per hour, but rather the volume of data that can be transmitted per unit of time.
Securing business networks
Networks are tempting large for mischief and fraud. An organisation has to be concerned about proper identification of users and authorisation of network access, the control of access and the protection of data integrity. A firm must identify users before they are granted access to a corporate network and that access should be appropriate for the given user.


2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

VOIP enables phone calls, faxes, voice mail, e-mail and Web conferences over digital networks. It saves money in three ways;
 VOIP runs over the existing computer network
 Calls over the Internet do not attract Telecommunications charges.
 Customers can port their numbers between cariers


3. Compare LANs and WANs

a. Local area networks (LANs) connect computers that reside in a single geographic location on the premises of the company that operates the LAN.
b. Wide area networks (WANs) – connect computers at different geographic sites.


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

RFID technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart labels that can store unique identifications and rely this information to electronic readers. RFID tags, often smaller than a grain of sand, combine tiny chips with an antenna.
Passive RFID – no internal power can pick up the very faint signal from an antenna, power up just enough to transmit data back to antenna. RFID Can also store small amount of EPROM data. These can be mass produced at v.low cost - Active RFID – have power and transmit much stronger and accurate data.
Passports – that instantly transmit data to a national security database about the time, date, place of people entering & leaving the country.

5. Identify the advantages of deploying mobile technology

Advantages
Ubiquity – anywhere / anytime – technology cheap
Convenience – Access quickly without a PC
Instant Connectivity – No boot up, nothing technical
Customisation – personalised information depending on location / tasted / preferences.
 Financial Services: include banking, wireless payments, micro payments, wireless wallets, bill-payment services, brokerage services, and money transfers.
 Mobile Banking: Many banks now offer access to financial & account information, the ability to transfer funds, and receive alerts on digital cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs.
 Wireless Electronic Payment Systems: these systems transfer mobile phones into secure, self-contained purchasing tools capable of instantly authorizing payments over the cellular network.
 Micro payments: electronic payments for small purchase amounts (generally less than $10).
 Mobile (Wireless) Wallets: technologies that allow cardholders to make purchases with a single click from their mobile devices.
 Wireless Bill Payments: Services provided by banking institutions that allow customers to pay their bills directly from their cell phones.

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Databases and Data Warehouses

1. List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information.

• Accuracy – are all the values correct? For example, is the name spelled correctly? Is the dollar amount recorded properly?

• Completeness – are any of the values missing? For example, is the address complete including street, city, state and postcode?

• Consistency – is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information? For example, do all total fields equal the true total of the individual field?

• Uniqueness – is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information? For example, are there any duplicate customers?

• Timeliness – is the information current with respect to the business requirements? For example, is information uploaded weekly, daily, or hourly?

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

Database Management System (DBMS) – is a system that is used to access information from a DBMS. It is software through which users and application programs interact with a database. The user sends requests to DBMS and the DBMS performs the actual manipulation of the information in the database. Microsoft Access is a form of DBMS.
Database - A database is the heart of an organisation, it stores key business information like;
 Sales Data – customers, sales, contacts
 Inventory Data – orders, stock, delivery
 Student Data – names, addresses, grades
All businesses use a database of some type. Effective managers know the value of extracting of important data.

3. Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database.

• Increased flexibility – database tend to mirror business structures, and a good database can handle changes quickly and easily, just as any good business needs to be able to handle changes quickly and easily. Databases provide flexibility in allowing each user to access the information in whatever way best suits his or her needs

• Increased scalability and performance – Scalability refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands. Performance measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction. Some organisations must be able to support hundreds of online users including employees, partners, customers and suppliers, who all want to access and share information.

• Reduced information redundancy – is the duplication of information, storing the same information in the multiple places. Redundant information occurs because organisations frequently capture and store the same information in multiple locations.

• Increased information quality – measures the quality of information. Within a database environment, integrity constraints are rules that help ensure the quality of information.

• Increased information security – like any assets the organisation must protect its information from unauthorised users or misuse. As systems become increasing complex and more available over the internet, the security becomes even bigger issue.

4. Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.

A relational database is a collection of tables from which data can be accessed in many different ways without having to reorganize the database tables. It stores the information in a form of data in row and column.
That is, once relationships are created, tables can “talk” to each other. We can link (relate) the tables to find:
• Which doctors are seeing a patient
• Which students are in which class
• Which item is selling the most on Friday’s


5. Describe the benefits of a data-driven website.

Development – allows the website owner to make changes any time – all without having to rely on a developer. A well data driven website enables updating with little or nothing training.
Content management – a static website requires a programmer to make updates. This adds an unnecessary layer between the business and its web content, which can lead to misunderstanding and slow turnarounds for desired changes.
Future expandability – having a data driven website enables the site to grow faster than would be possible with a static site.
Minimising human error – this will lead to bugs and inconsistencies that can be time consuming and expensive to track down and fix.
Cutting production and update – a data driven website can be updated and publisher by any competent data entry or administrative person.
More efficient – computers are excellent at keeping volumes of information intact. With a data driven solution, the system keeps track of the templates, so users do not have to.
Improved stability – any programmer who has to update a website from ‘static’ templates must be much organised to keep track of all the source files.


6. Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organization
Data warehouse - a logical collection of information – gathered from many different operational databases – that supports business analysis activities and decision making task. The primary purpose of data warehouse is to aggregate information throughout an organization unto a single repository in such a way that employees can make decisions and undertake business analysis activities.
Data marts - In a data warehouse and data mart, information is multi-dimensional; a cube, it contains layers of columns and rows. Dimension – a particular attribute of information.

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Enterprise Architectures

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:
Identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. A signal backup or restore failure can cost an organisation more than time and money; some data cannot be re- created, and the business intelligence lost from that data can be tremendous.

Information Infrastructure Architecture
Includes the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the organisation’s goals. the actual implementation that will provide for effective Information Systems, including the hardware, software, services and people involved.


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

• Backup and recovery
• Disaster recovery
• Information security

Backup and recovery
Each year businesses lose time and money because of system crashes and failures. One way to minimise the damages of a crash is to have a backup and recovery strategy in place. A backup is an extent copy of a system’s information. Recovery is the ability to get up and running in the event of a system crash or failure and includes restoring the information backup.
A chain of more than 4000 franchises locations, 7 – Eleven Taiwan uploads and recovery information from its central location to all its chain locations daily. The company implemented a new technology solution that could quickly reliably download and upload and recovery information.

Disaster recovery
Disasters such as power outages, flood and even harmful hacking strike businesses every day. Organisations must develop a disaster recovery plan to prepare for these occurrences, such as February 2009 bushfires in Victoria. These fires caused more than 180 deaths, destroyed more than 1800 houses, obliterated towns, and destroyed data.
A disaster recovery plan is a detailed process for recovering information or an IT system in the event of a catastrophic disasters such as a fire or flood. Spending on disaster recovery is raising worldwide among financial institutions.

Information security
security professionals are under increasing pressure to do the job correctly and cost effectively as networks beyond organisations to remote users, partners and customers, and to mobile phones, PDAs and other mobile devices. Regulatory requirements to safeguard data have increased, and concerns about identity theft are at an all time high. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in 2007, identity theft was costing Australians more on identity theft and information security.

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


• Flexibility – organisations must watch today’s business, as well as tomorrow’s. When designing and building systems. Systems must flexible enough to meet all types of business changes.

• Scalability – Estimating organisational growth can occur in a number of different forms, including more customers and product and product lines and expansion into new markets. Scalability refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands. If an organisation grows faster than anticipated, it might experience all types or performance degradation, ranging from running out of disk space to a slowdown in transaction speeds. Anticipating expected – and unexpected – growth is key to building scalable systems that can support that growth.

• Reliability – ensures all systems are functioning correctly and providing accurate information. Reliability is another term for accuracy when discussing the correctness of systems within the context of efficiency IT metrics.

• Availability – addresses when systems can be increased by users. Availability is typically measured relative to I00 percent operational or never failing. A widely held but difficult to achieve standard of availability for a system or product is known as five 9s availability.

• Performance – measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction. Not having enough performance capacity can have a devastating, negative impact on a business. A customer will wait only a few seconds for a website to return a request before giving up and moving on to another website. To ensure adaptable systems performance, capacity planning helps an organisation determine future IT infrastructure requirements for new equipment and additional network capacity.


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

• Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services

• SOA ensures IT systems can adapt quickly, easily, and economically to support rapidly changing business needs

• Using meta data and existing applications, users can re-use applications (services) many times for different tasks, making development cheaper and more flexible
A SOA allows enterprises to plug in new services or upgrade existing services in a granular fashion

• respond more quickly and cost-effectively to changing market-conditions
• The key technical concepts of SOA are:
• services
• interoperability
• loose coupling

5. What is an event?

Events are the eyes, and ears of the business expressed in technology – they detect threats and opportunities and alert those who can act on the information. Pioneered by telecommunication and financial services companies, this involves using IT systems to monitor a business process for events that matter a low stock alert in the warehouse.


6. What is a service?
Services are more like software products than they are coding projects. They must appeal to a broad audience, and they need to be reusable if they are going to have an impact on the productivity. Early forms of services were defined at low a level in the architecture to interest the business, such as simple print save services.


7. What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?
Companies can use the following technologies to increase their performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively:

• Interoperability - is the capability of two or more computer systems to share data and resources, even though they may be made by different manufacturers

• Loose coupling - is the capability of services to be joined together on demand to create composite services, or disassembled just as easily into their functional components, Loose coupling is a way of ensuring that the technical details are decoupled from the service

• Virtualization - is a framework of dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments, It is a way of increasing physical resources to maximise the investment in hardware.

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