Strategic Management of IT – Fall 2014

MIS 3534-001 – Prof. Min-Seok Pang

MIS 3534 – Thank you!

Dear all,

I have competed grading of Executive Report #3 and entered the final grades to Blackboard and TUPortal. You should be able to check yours now at Blackboard and tomorrow (12/16) at TUPortal.

Please be advised that the final grades are firm and final, and I will not respond to any request for a higher grade and extra credits.

I would like to sincerely thank you for your hard work and contribution to this class so far. I very much appreciate it. I also wish the best of luck in your continued studies, career, and future endeavors.

As I said in the classroom, if you’d like to keep in touch with me, you can connect with me via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/minspang.

Once again, thank you, and have warm and pleasant holidays!
Best regards,
– min-seok

Day 13 – IT-Driven Competitive Strategies – online discussion questions

  • With ITC eChoupal, who would be unhappy? How does ITC address the resist of those unhappy?
  • While eChoupal seems to be beneficial to farmers, they are not well-versed in using PCs and the Internet. How does ITC help them adopt eChouapl?
  • Why is trust between farmers and ITC important for ITC eChoupal?
  • How does eChoupal contribute to the competitiveness of ITC?
  • Knowing about both business and technologies, what would be valuable business skills that MIS majors can have but other majors (marketing, finance, or engineering) don’t?

 

Day 12 – IT Risk Management – online discussion questions

  • As CIO of IVK, how would you explain the incidents at Ch. 10 to Wall Street analysts?
  • How would you explain the difference between a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and an intrusion to a non-IT boss or colleages?
  • Why is the “rush-a-change-into-production” happening at IVK?
  • What would be proper procedures and policies for a database?
  • What would be proper procedures and policies for personal devices?
  • Why may we lose flexibility, innovation, or responsiveness to business due to policies and procedures for IT risk management?

 

Executive Report #3 Topic #2 – References

Executive Report #3 Topic #3 – References

Day 12 – IT Adventures Ch. 10 & 11 – brief guidelines

Read Chapter 10 and 11 of IT Adventures and summarize with the following focuses.

  • What happened at IVK on Thursday, June 28?
  • What are the issues with regard to disclosure?
  • What are the three recovery plans? What is Mr. Barton’s recommendation and why did he recommend it? What is Mr. Williams decision?

Unofficial LETTER GRADES as of Nov 20

The unofficial LETTER GRADES as of Nov. 20 are available on Blackboard.

Do keep in mind that these grades are strictly unofficial and only to inform the current standing in this course. The final grades will depend on the performance in the rest of the semester including Executive Report #3.

 

Day 11 Strategic IT Outsourcing – online discussion questions

  • What constitutes “transaction costs” in capital expenditures?
  • How unconventional are the proposed deals with the network vendors and IBM?
  • Whose wage structures are similar to restaurant servers? Why do they get paid similar to servers?
  • What would be the reasons for Ericsson or IBM to sign the deal with Bharti? What would be the reasons not to sign?
  • Why do trust and mutual cooperation matter in a long-term outsourcing contract?
  • Why is a service-level agreement important?

 

Day 11 – Strategic IT Outsourcing (II) – in-class discussion questions

  • If you are a parent of a high-school kid, how would you write a private-tutoring contract with a tutor? If you are a tutor, how would you?
  • What’s the strategic position of Bharti Airtel in the industry? Is it doing well? What are Bharti’s core competencies?
  • Why did Mr. Gupta, the managing director of Bharti, say “Budgeting for capital expenditures was a nightmare”? (p. 1)
  • Think about the relationship between Bharti and Ericsson, a network equipment vendor. What are the interests of Bharti? What are the interests of Ericsson? Are they in the same boat?
  • In the proposed outsourcing contract with the network vendors, how will Bharti pay, for what? With IBM, how will it pay, for what?
  • If you were a network or IT engineer, would you work for Bharti or Nokia/IBM?
  • What could go wrong in Bharti’s long-term outsourcing relationship?
  • Should two roommates write and sign an agreement? Or can they?

We’ll discuss these questions in-class next Monday. Do not write comments here.

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