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Do you agree that It Is Important for managers to understand IT? Write a paragraph to support your pollen. Answer: It Is extremely Important that managers understand IT. This is not only the case for IT, but for any department that the managers may not be intimately knowledgeable about. Without leadership understand your department, they may not understand why certain actions are taken and why additional costs need to be spent to achieve business goals. IT departments is a newer area in the world of business that many managers don’t quite understand.
For some, It may seem Like a money-pit that never provides revenue for the business, and that Is precisely why IT departments need to be better at communicating what It is that they do and why it’s so important to the business’s success. 3. Identify and briefly discuss two examples of function IT. Answer: Two examples of IT functions are implementation and maintenance. Implementation can be viewed when starting up a new location for a company. Communication lines through telephony and a LANA need to be setup, as does the devices that will be operating on these networks.
Maintenance Is often done after major changes have occurred and the IT staff Is making sure that all of the IT resources are available to the authorized users. 6. What percentage of revenue should a retail organization spend on IT? Discuss. Answer: It’s hard to put a percentage on the amount that should be spent on IT without additional information. Typically, you do not want to spend more money on IT resources than the information or services are worth. 8. What is meant be social influence, and how can It affect the acceptance of new IT?
Answer: Social Influence Is hen one person’s emotions or opinions spread to other people. This can affect the acceptance of new IT, because management is often fine with their current infrastructure if there are no obvious flaws. It can often be difficult to express changes that need to occur to make the business run more efficiently. It can only take one person to say something negative or positive to greatly change the outcome of any departments’ goals. 10. What unfavorable results could occur If management Is not appropriately involved with IT?
Answer: Most often management will try to make gadget cuts In the IT department or not approve future projects If they do not have any involvement with IT. This is a point I was attempting to make in Question #1 . Chapter 1 Case Study 1 . In September 2013, Progressive was ranked by Information Week as the 29th top leader in IT. This has a lot to do with the progress they made with their product “Snapshot” which tracks driver usage and tendencies to change the rates of Insurance premiums. 2. Progressive keeps changing their claims processing system because it’s necessary to keep up with their competitors.
As advances in technology occur, it provides businesses such as Progressive, more computing power at lower cost. This allows Progressive and others to incorporate more data and features into their employee applications that would not have been an option 5-10 years previously. As time and technology goes on, they will probably change their systems more regularly to keep up with competition. 3. Without knowing how many managers tense are Ana tenet responsibilities, It Is Nora to say. IT teen company currently runs without much managerial “fat”, I would say they would not need less managers.
Instead I would say they need all of their managers to be technically sax. N. Y in an environment that considers itself as a “Technology company in the auto insurance business”. With more customers comes more customer service agents and proper management to guide the agents in the direction the business wants to go is a necessity. 4. The entire process for Progressive would begin January 2006 and conclude June 2008. This gives Progressive 2 h years to complete the entire process of changing software suites.
I would spend as little time as possible on the Informing hash due to employees resisting the change that is about to occur. I would make sure that the suite is ready for demonstration immediately after informing the employees what the plans are. This will give the employees something to look forward to if they approve the demonstration. I would provide all information necessary to back up the company’s decision to make this move so that they have a better understanding. This should lower the anxiety among employees as they expect the software they use to change.
The Educate phase is the phase that most of this would occur, and I believe it is the most important phase. The Commit phase would come after all Alpha and Beta testing were complete and all employees were given some time to adapt to the software in a training environment. Below is the time table I would use: Inform: January – June 2006 Educate: July 2006 – Jan 2008 Commit: Feb. – June 2008 Chapter 2 Discussion Questions 1 . What role should the CEO take during the strategic planning process? Identify other key players and their roles.
Answer: The CEO of the company should take on the role of approval. It would be best to keep the CEO informed of incoming requests so they don’t feel blind-sided. The role of the CEO is to make the executive decisions for the company’s wellness. For this reason, I would not bother the CEO too much with the details of the project until a presentation is ready. Other key players would be the financial person, and heads of the other departments. This would be necessary in order to understand the needs of other departments in case they are directly or indirectly impacted.
The department heads or members of the executive team could offer guidance or provide ideas for changes before the final draft of the strategic plan is completed. 2. How often should the vision/mission statement be updated or revised? Answer: I think this depends on many different factors, such as the type of business. A vision/mission statement may not be necessary for say, a farm, while a statement would most definitely be necessary for a more corporate company. For most companies I would imagine an annual review would be a good idea. . What is the difference between an objective and a goal? Give an example of each. Answer: An objective is a step taken in order to achieve a goal. An example of a goal could be replacing all desktop PC’s in a company with upgraded units. An objective for this goal would be to get the requirements needed for the new PC’s and then get quotes from different vendors. 9. Define the term strategy and discuss how a strategy is related to objectives and goals. Provide an example of an organizational strategy.
Answer: strategy In teen sense AT II, would De teen approach TN department would want to take in order to complete their objectives in order to achieve their goal. 12. Define the term measure and discuss how a measure is related to an objective and a goal. Answer: Measure is how an organization would… Assure their effectiveness in completing objectives and goals. Chapter 2 Case Study Honey Baked Ham is a retailer, originally located in Troy Michigan, of ham that has walk-in stores and does online sales. The original vision was to open a few small stores and sell ham products that the public would enjoy.
Since the sass’s the company has spread from a few stores into a nationwide chain. They also ventured into online sales which has rocketed their company into a large corporation. Their STRENGTH is in marketing and branding. Most people who have any type of disposable income knows who Honey Baked Ham is. They offer premium ham for holiday occasions. Their WEAKNESS is their price. They would be able to reach a much broader market if they could bring the price down further towards the average price of store-bought ham.
The OPPORTUNITIES that exist with this company is the possibility or broadening their customer base by lowering prices. They could do this with by the obvious lowering of prices, or by using some sort of loyalty program. This would allow them to lower their prices but create repeat customers. The THREAT that this company faces is being undercut by competitors. Chapter 3 Discussion Questions 2. What is meant by the scope of a project? How can the scope of a project be define? Answer: The scope of a project is basically what work needs to be done to complete specific assignments.
The scope of a project is the actions that need to be done to complete the project. 5. What is the difference between quality assurance and quality control? Answer: Quality assurance is the set of activities to ensure quality in the processes in which products are developed. Quality control is the activities associated with ensuring quality of products. 8. Discuss the “team dynamics” for a giggly effective (or ineffective) team of which you were a member. Can you explain why the team performed so well (or poorly) using the forming-storming-morning- performing model?
Answer: The team dynamics that I was a part of that worked ineffectively was when I first Joined the Navy and started working. The team that I was a part of consisted of all new people and no one had very clear guidance or training on what to do. Based on the forming-storming-morning-performing model, we pretty much failed at the forming step, because we never had clear direction on what we needed to do. 9. What sort of behaviors would indicate that the sponsoring team is not fully engaged in a project and instead is looking to the project team to make the project a success? What is the danger with this attitude?
Answer: Some behaviors that would indicate the sponsoring team is not fully engaged in a project that they requested be completed, would be receptiveness until progress meetings, and not bringing anything to the table during these meetings. This happens all the time where I work. We will be asked to accomplish certain tasks without much guidance on the customers’ actual requests. The problem with this approach is that he team engaging the project will complete the task based on assumptions instead of getting productive feedback and direction on where the project needs to be headed.
Chapter 3 Action Memo 2 1 would attempt to counter teen manager Walt n Y months Instead AT B or 1 reason being, is the extra people the manager promises to provide the project, will be delayed by a month or so. This will take additional time away from yourself or whoever is designated with spinning them up on the project. Without knowing the scope of the project or what they are requesting, it is hard to come up with a different decision besides the one I stated.