Week 12 Questions

Project Management

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

A project's vision needs to be clear, concise and comprehensible and the same to all stakeholders. Projects consunme vast amounts of resources. It is imperative to understand how the organisation allocates its scarce and vaulable resources in order to get the big picture.
There are three primary variables in any project - time, cost and scope. These variable are interdependent. All projects are limited in some way by these three constraints. The project Management Institute calls the framework for evaluating these competing demands the triple constraint.



Triple Constraint - Project Management Interdependent Variables



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

The two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning are PERT and Gantt charts.

PERT Chart
A PERT (program evaluation and review technique) chart is a graphical network model that depicts a project's tasks and the relationships between those tasks. PERT charts define dependancy between project tasks before those tasks are scheduled. PERT charts frequently display a projects critical path (a path from the start to the finish that passes through all the tasks that are critical to completing the project in the shortest amount of time).

Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart is a simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calender. In a Gantt chart, tasks are listed vertically and the project's time frame  is listed horizontally. A Gantt chart works well for representing the project schedule. It also shows actual progress of tasks against the planned duration.

PERT Chart vs. Gantt Chart

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

A project manager must focus on three primary areas to ensure success:

• People - resolving conflicts within the team and balancing the needs of the project with the personal and professional needs of the tearm are two of the challeneged facing project managers. Many times, the people management side of project management makes the difference in pulling off a successful project.
• Communications - the key to excellent project management. The project manager must plan what they are going to communicate as a formal part of the project management plan. An important aspect of a project management communications plan is to provide a method for coninually obtaining and monitoring feedback from and for all stakeholders.
• Change - successful organisation and people learn to anticipate and react appropriately to change. Effective chain management is a critical core competency. Change management is a set of techniques that aid in evolution, composition and policy management of the design and implementation of a system.

4. Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed.

Reasons for Failure:

• Unrealistic expectations - when a company does not align their expectations with reality there is a high risk of failure, and the business generally ends up disappointed
• Poor project management - If the project is not managed correctly, that is organised and well structured, then it's chances of success are limited

Reasons for Success:

• Good communication - this is a vital element of any project, as the communication accross a team needs to be clear and understood in order for the project to be successful
• Good project management - when a project is well managed, organised, on time and within financial budgets, it is very likely to succeed

Week 10 Questions

Customer Relationship Management and Business Intellegence


1. What is your understanding of CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) involves managing all aspects of a customer's relationship with an organisation to increase customer loyalty and retention as well as an organisation's profitability. As organisations begin to migrate from the traditional product-focused organisation toward customer- driven organisations, they are recognising their customers as experts, not just revenue generators. Organisations are quickly realising that without customers they simply would not exist, and it is critical they do everything they can to ensure their customer's satisfaction. CRM is one of the most valuable assets a company can acquire.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

2. Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

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

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

Marketing CRM technologies include:

• List generator - compile customers information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns. Information sources include website visits, website questionnaires, online and offline surveys, flyers, toll-free numbers, current customer lists etc. List generators provide the marketing department with a solid understanding of the type of customer it needs to target for marketing campaigns.
• Campaign management - systems that guide users through marketing campaigns, peforming such tasks as campaign definition, planning, scheduling, segmentation and success analysis.
• Cross-selling and up-selling - cross selling is selling additional products and services to a customer. Up selling is increasing the value of the sale. CRM systems offer marketing departments all kinds of information about their customers and their products, which can help them identify cross-selling and up-selling marketing campaigns.

Sales CRM technologies include:

• Sales management CRM systems - automate each phase of the sales process, helping individual sales representative co-ordinate and organise all of their accounts. These systems can even provide an analysis of the sales cycle and calculate how each individual sales representative is performing during the sales process.
• Contact management CRM systems - maintains customer information and identifies prospective customers for future sales. Contact management systems include such features as maintaining organisations charts, detail customer notes, and supplemental sales information.
• Opportunity management CRM systems - target sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales. Opportunity management systems determine potential customers and competitors and define selling efforts, including budgets and schedules.

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

Sales departments were the first to begin developing CRM systems. Sales departments has two primary reasons to track customer sales information electronically. First, sales representatives were struggling with the overwhelming amount of customer account information they were required to maintain and track. Second, companies were struggling with the issue that much of their vital customer and sales information remained in the heads of their sales representatives. One of the first CRM components built to help address these issues was the sales force automation component.

5. Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses.

Business Intellegence (BI) refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to and analyse data and information to support decision-making efforts.
To improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better, more informed decisions. The result creates an gile intelligent enterprise.

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

Data rich, information poor
As businesses increase their reliance on enterprise systems such as CRM, they are rapidly accumulating cast amounts of data. Every interaction between departments or with the outside world, historical information of past transactions, as well as external market information, is entered into information systems for future use and access.
The amount of data being 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.
As a result, information has to be requested from different departments or IT, who must dedicate staff to pull together various reports. The challenge is to transform datainto useful information.

The solution - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
As stated in the previous question, to improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better informed decisions.

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

Data Mining is the process of analysing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone. Data mining and also begin at a summary information level and progress through increasing levels to detail (drilling down) or the reverse (drilling up). Two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining are:

1. 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. Data mining tools that 'understand' human language are finding unexpected applications in medicine.
2. Association detection - reveals the degree to which variables are related and the nature and frequency of these relationships in the information. One of the most common forms of association detection analysis is market based analysis, which analyses such items as websites and checkout scanner information to detect customers' buying behaviour and predict future behaviour.

Week 9 Questions

Operations Management and Supply Chain


1. Define the term operatios management

Operations Management (OM) is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform reources into goods and services. Operations management is responsible for managing the core processes use to manufacture goods and produce services. Operations involves the conversion of inputs to outputs.

The conversions on inputs to outputs

2. Explain operations management's role in business

The scope of OM ranges accross the organisation and includes many interrelated activities, such as forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, managing inventories, assuring quality, motivating employees, deciding where to locate families and more. Typical OM activities (using the example of an airline company) include:

• Forcasting: estimating seat demands for flights, weather, and landing conditions and growth or decline of the industry
• Capacity planning: key essential metric for the airline to maintain cash flow  and increase revenues
• Scheduling: airline operates on tight schedules that must be maintained including flights, pilots, baggage, ground crews etc
• Managing Inventory: items such as food, beverages, first aid equipment, pillows etc are essential for the airline
• Assuring Quality: safety is the highest priority - high quality service during check in, ticketing, in-flight service and courtesy
• Motivating and training employees: employees must be highly trained, continually motiviated in order to deal with frustrated customers etc
• Location facilities: which cities to offer to, where to host maintenance facilities, where to loacte minor and major hubs

3. Descirbe the correlation between operations management and information technology

Managers can use IT to heavily influence OM decisions including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One of the greatest benefits of IT on OM is in making operational decisions because OM exerts considerable influence over the degree to which the goals and objectives of the organisation are realised. Most OM decisions involve many possible alternatives that can have varying impcts on revenues and expenses. OM information systems are critical for managers to be able to make well-informed decisions.

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

A supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in the procurement of a product of raw material. Supply Chaim Management (SMC) involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

A Supply Chain

5. List and desribe the five componenets of a typical supply chain

The five basic components of supply chain management are:

1. Plan - the strategic portion of supply management. A company must have a plan for managing all the sources that fo toward meeting customer demand for products and services.
2. Source - companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products. Companies must ald develip a set of pricing, delivery and payment processes with suppliers
3. Make - maufacturing products or services, including scheduling the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging and preparing for delivery
4. Deliver - commonly referred to as logistics - the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of suppliers from supplier to customers
5. Return - typically the most problematic step in the supply chain as companies must creat a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products

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

Information technology's primary rold in Supply Chain Management is creating the integrations or tight process and information linkages between fuctions with a firm - such as marketing, sales, finance, manufacturingand distribution - and between firms, which allow the smooth, synchronised flow of both information and product between customers, suppliers and transportation providers accross the supply chain. IT integrates planning, decisio-making processes, business operating processes and information sharing for business performance management. Considerable evidence shows that this type of supply chain integration results in superior supply chain capabilities and profits.

Week 8 Questions

Networks and Wireless

1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.

Business benefits of using wireless technology include:

• Universal access to information and applications - people are mobile and have more access to information than ever before, however they sitll need to get to the point where they can access all information, anytime, anywhere.
• The automation of business processes - wireless technologies have the ability to centralise critical information and eliminate redundant processes
• User convenience; Timliness and ability to conduct business 24/7, 365 days a year - people delayed in airports no longer have to feel cut-off from the world or their office. Through wireless tools and wireless solutions such as Blackberry RIM or an iphone device, individual can acess their information anytime, anywhere.

2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

Some features available using VoIP solutions include:

• business application integration
• calender integration
• call waiting
• caller ID
• click-of-a-mouse simplicity
• conference call capabilities with on-screen document sharing
• comprehensice information about each caller
• desktop application integration
• dial-by-name capability
• easy navigation
• four or five digit dialling to anyone, regardless of location
• mobility - users can work from anywhere
• three-way calling

This video provides a brief explanation  of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP):
 

 

3. Compare LANs and WANs

A Local Area Network (LAN) is designed to conncet a group of computers in close proximity to each other such as in a school, an office building or a home. A LAN is useful for sharing resources like files, printers, games or other applications. A LAN in turn often conncect to other LANs and to the internet or wide area networks.
A Wide Area Network (WAN) spans a large geographic area, such as a state, province or country. WANs often connect multiple smaller networks, such as local area networks (LANs).



LAN vs WAN

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

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart labels that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to electronic readers. RFID tags, often smaller than a grain of sand, combine tiny chips with an antenna. When a tag is placed on an item, it automatically radios its location to RFID readers on shop shelves, checkout counters, loading-bay doors and shopping carts - making the supply chain more effective. With RFID tags, inventory is taken automatically and continuously, also helping to make the supply chain more effective. RFID tags can cut costs by requirig fewer workers for scanning items; they also can provide more current and more accurate information to the entire supply chain.


5. Identify the advantages and disadvantage of deploying mobile technology

ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES
Mobile technology is beneficial to businesses as it allows individuals and companies as a whole to access the internet and each other anytime, anywhere.	Mobile technology can harm a business as it creates many security risks and may become problematic if the business is reliant on these technologies.
Mobile phones & pagers : provide connectivity for portable and mobile applications, both personal and business	Location service systems (GPS): -          May cause embarrassment as one customer’s knowledge of another’s location may lead to embarrassing situations -          Harassment – location information can be used to harass or attack a user
WiMax wireless broadband: enables wireless networks to extend as far as approximately 50km and transfer information, voice and video at faster speeds than cable.	Limits of technology: if a company is unrealistic about the ability of a mobile technology, this may lead to a downfall or loss of business
Security Sensor: alerts customers to break0ins and errant creatures such as files. Its dual sensors record vibration and acoustic disturbances – such as a shattered window – to help avoid false alarms.	Loss of data: Mobile technologies commonly lose a business’ information as the data is not immediately recorded and backed up

Week 7 Questions

Databases and Data Warehouses

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

Characteristic	Description	Example
Accuracy	Are all the values correct?	Is the name spelled correctly? Is the dollar amount recorded properly?
Completeness	Are any of the values missing?	Is the address complete including street, city, state and postcode?
Consistency	Is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information?	Do all total fields equal the true total of the individual fields?
Uniqueness	Is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information?	Are there any duplicate customers?
Timeliness	Is the information current with respect to the business requirements?	Is information updated weekly, daily, or hourly?

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

A databse maintains information about various types of objects, events, people and places. Organisational information is stored in a database. Applications and programs, such as supply chain management systems and customer relationship management systems, access the data in the database so the program can consult it to answer queries. The records retrieved in answer to questions become information that can be used to make decisions. The computer program used to manage and query a database is known as a database management system (DBMS).



A Database Management System



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

Database information offers many advantages including:

• Increased Flexibility - Databases tend to mirror bsuiness 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. Databses provide flexibility in allowing each user to access the information in whatever way best suits their needs.
• Increased Scalability and Performance - Only a database could 'scale' to handle the massive volumes of information and the large numbers of users required for successful launch of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website. Scalability refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands. Performance measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction.
• Reudced Information Redundancy - redundancy is the duplication of information, or storing the same information in multiple places. Redundant information occurs because organisation frequently capture and store the same information in multiple locations.
• Increased Information Integrity (Quality) - information integrity is a measure of the quality of information. Within a database environment, integrity constraints are rules that help ensure the quality of information. Itegrity constraints can be defined and built into the database design. The databse ensure that users can never violate these constraints. There are two types of integrity constraints: (1) relational integrity constraints and (2) business-critical integrity constraints.
• Increased Information Security - As systems become increasingly complex and more available over the internet, security becomes an even bigger issue. Databases offer many security features including passwords, access levels and access controls. Passwords provide authentication of the user who is gaining access to the system. Access levels determine who has access to the different types of information and access controls determine what type of access they have to the information.

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

Entities and Attributes
An entity in the relation database model is a person, place, thing, transaction or event about which information is stored. A table in the relational database model is a collection of similar entities. Attributes, also called fields or columns, are characteristics or properties of an entity class.

Keys and Relationships
to manage and organise various entity classes within the relational database model, developers must identify primary keys and foreign keys and use them to creat logical relationships. A primary key is a field that uniquely identifies a given entity in the table. A foreign key in the relational databas emodel is a primary key of one table that appears as an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship between the two tables.

Example of Database Keys and Relationships

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

Data-driven website business advantages:

• Development - allows the website owner to make changes at any time - all without having to rely on a developer. A well-structure, data-driven website enables updating with little or no training
• Content Management - a static website requires a programmer to make updates. This adds an unnecessary layer between the business and ite web content, which can lead to misunderstandings 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. Changing the layout, displays and functionality of the site is easier ith data-driven solution.
• Minimising Human Error - Even the most competent programmer can make mistakes, leading to bugs and inconsistencies that can be time consuimg and expensive to track down and fix, A well-designed, data-driven website will have 'error-trapping' mechanisms to ensure that required information is filled out correctly and that content is entrered and displayed in its correct format.
• Cutting production and Update Costs - a data-driven website can be updated and 'published' by any competent data0entry person. In addition to being convenient and more affordable, changes and updates will take a fraction of the time that they would on a static site.
• More Efficient - with a data-driven solution, the system keeps track of the templates, so users do not have to. A data-driven infrasturcture will improve the reliability and stability of a website, while greatly reducing the chance of 'breaking' some part of the site when adding new areas.
• Improved Stability - if a programmer is not organised or leaves unexpectedly, it colud involve recreating existing work if those source files cannot be found. With a data-driven website, there is peace of mind, knowing the content is never loset - even if the programmer is!

6. Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organisation.

A Data warehouse is a logical collection of information - gathered from many different operation databases - that supports business analysis activites and decision-making tasks. The primary purpose of a data warehouse is to aggregate informtation throughout an organsisation into a single repository in such a way that employees can make decisions and undertake business analysis activities. A Data mart contains a subset of data warehouse information. To distinguish between data warehouses and data marts, think of data warehouses as having a more organisational focus and data marts having focused information subsets particular to the needs of a given business unit such as finance or production and operations.



A Data Warehouse Overview



Week 6 Questions

Enterprise Architectures

1. What is information architecture? What is infrastructure architecture? How do they differ? How do they relate to each other?

Information Architecture identifies where and how improtant information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. There are three primary areas of information architecture: 

1. back up and recovery
2. disaster recovery
3. information security.

Infrustracture Architecture includes the hardware, software and telecommunications equipment that, when combines, provides the underlying foundation to support the organisation's goals.

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

A single backup or restore failure can cost an organisation more than time and money - some data cannot be re-created, and the business intellegence lost from the data can be tremendous. Chief information officers (CIO's) should have enough confidence in their back up and recovery systems to be able to walk around and randomly pull out cables to prove their system is sage. The CIO shouls also be secure enough to perform this test during the peak business hours.

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

There are five primary characteristics of a solid infrastructure architecture:  

1. Flexibility - systems must be flexible enough to meet all types of business changes, for example a system might be designed to include the ability to handle multiple currencies and languages, even though the company is not currently performing in other countries.
2. Scalability - refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands. If an organisation grows faster than predicted, it might experience all types of performance degradations, ranging from running out of disk space to a slowdown in transaction speeds.
3. Reliability - ensures all systems are fuctioning correctly and providing accurate information. Reliability is another term for accuracy when discussing the corectness of systems within IT.
4. Availability - addresses when systems can be accessed by users. High availability refers to a system of component that is continuously operational for a desirably long period of time.
5. 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.

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

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



Service Oriented Architecture

 Benefits
SOA helps today's businesses innovate by ensuring that IT systems can adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs. It helps businesses increase the flexibility of their processes, strengthen their underlying IT architecture and reuse their existing IT investments by creating conncections among information sources. SOA, with its loosely coupled nature, allows enterprises to plug in new services or upgrade existing services in a granular fashion. This enables businesses to address the new business requirements, provides the option to make the legacy applications as services, thereby safeguarding existing IT infrastructure investments.

5. What is an event?

Events are the eyes and ears of the business expressed in technology - they detect threats and opportunites 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, and automatically alert the people best equipped to handle the issue.

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 ne reusable if they are going to have a impact on productivity. New services can describe a valuable business process.

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

Companies can use the following emerging technologies to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively:

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) - a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services. (See question 4)
• Virtualisation - is a framework for dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. It is a way of increasing physical resources to maximise the investment in hardware. 
• Grid Computing - an aggregation of geographically dispersed computing, storage and network resources. coordinated to deliver improved performance, higher quality of service, better utilisation and easier access to data