ROI Homework #2 (due by Nov 21)
Week 10 – Business Value of IT (II) – B&K Distributors
- Who are B&K’s customers and how does it categorize them?
- What are the expected changes in the relationship with customers after implementation of the Web Portal?
- What are the cost components of the Web Portal?
In-class discussion questions – Week 10 (Nov 7)
- What would be the ramifications of the incident in IT Adventures Ch. 10? (Imagine the worst.)
- Why did Mr. Wells, IVK VP of Legal, demand to pull the plugs?
- How would you explain “wipe production servers clean, and rebuild the production configuration” (p. 170) to Mr. Williams?
- Among the three options in Ch 11, What is the least costly option? What is the most costly option?
- What is the most conservative option? What is the most risky option?
- What are the reasons to disclose the security incidents? What would be the reasons not to disclose?
Online discussion questions – Oct 31
- In what ways can a relationship between a parent and a tutor go sour? How can a contract prevent or resolve it?
- What are the other examples of “incentive salaries” for restaurant servers?
- How would you explain the difference between a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and an intrusion to a non-IT boss or colleagues?
- If an intrusion was indeed occurred and it was the intruder who changed the database index file, why would he/she have done it?
Week 9 – IT Risk Management – class slides and video (UPDATED)
How Target Blew It – BusinessWeek (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-13/target-missed-alarms-in-epic-hack-of-credit-card-data)
Week 9 – IT Adventures Ch. 10 and 11 – Brief Guidelines
- 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?
In-class discussion questions – Week 9 (Oct 31)
- If you were Mr. Barton, how would you explain the situation in Chapter 10 to your CEO, Mr. Carl Williams, in English?
- If you were Mr. Barton, how would you explain the situation in Chapter 10 to Wall Street analysts you’re scheduled to meet today?
- Did an attacker or attackers intrude inside of IVK’s systems?
- How would you explain the difference between a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and an intrusion?
- How would you explain “transaction is jammed up” or “the database is corrupted” (p. 164-165)?
- What does it mean by “Apparently a database index file had been somehow renamed, and another substituted in its place”? (p. 167)
- Why can’t IVK figure out whether an intrusion occurred or something else happened?
- What is the “rush-a-change-into-production” thing? (p. 166)
- For Cho to find evidence of an intrusion, what does he need?
- What would be the ramifications of this crash? (Imagine the worst.)
- Why did Mr. Wells, IVK VP of Legal, demand to pull the plugs?
- How would you explain “wipe production servers clean, and rebuild the production configuration” (p. 170) to Mr. Williams?
- Among the three options in Ch 11, What is the least costly option? What is the most costly option?
- What is the most conservative option? What is the most risky option?
- What are the reasons to disclose the security incidents? What would be the reasons not to disclose?
Week 8 – Strategic IT Outsourcing – class slides and videos
Week 08 – Outsourcing (color).pdf
Week 08 – Outsourcing (bw).pdf
SAS Name #1 in Best Companies to Work For – SAS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjTZF19jBs8)
Google Cafe Tour – YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1OabdWe_h8)
Online discussion questions – Oct 24
- If you are running a manufacturing company, when/why would you let outside vendors (e.g. UPS, Fedex) handle logistics and delivery to customers?
- When would you keep delivery/logistics in-house and let your own employees do it?
- What can you explain about information asymmetry and conflicts of interests in any other contractual relationship that you can think of?
- What kind of “homework” or research would be needed in selecting an IT outsourcing vendor?
- What would happen if you did not do enough homework in finding a mechanic, a contractor, or a doctor?
- How should IVK choose a new vendor among VerxaWeb, ServoLith, and HiOSoft?
Unofficial LETTER GRADES posted on Gradebook
I’ve posted unofficial mid-term LETTER grades on Gradebook (http://community.mis.temple.edu/gradebook/). This includes top 5 reading brief scores so far (dropping one lowest), Executive Report #1, and ROI Homework #1.
This is the grade you would be given if it was the end of the semester. Please be advised that this is strictly unofficial, and your final grade will depend on your performance for the rest of the semester.
Executive Report #2 – due by Nov 11 (draft due by Nov 4)
Week 8 – IT Adventures Ch. 7 and 14 – Brief Guideline
Chapter 7
- Why is the Infrastructure Replacement (IR) project failing?
Chapter 14
- What are the differences between three prospective vendors for the IR project?
- What are the differences between two contracting models that IVK is considering?
Your report does not need to include
- “Wednesday, April 28, 10:12 a.m.” (p. 107-109),
- the consultant’s report (p. 120-122),
- “the third major disagreement” (p. 226-228),
- “Monday, October 1, 11:00 a.m.” (p. 228-231), and
- vendor assessment matrices (p. 233).
But please DO NOT SKIP to read them.
In-class discussion questions – Week 8 (Oct 24)
- Do you fix your car by yourself or have a mechanic do maintenance? Why?
- How do you choose your mechanic? Based on what?
- Why does Apple outsource the entire manufacturing operations to offshore vendors?
- Why would a company outsource IT operation and development to an external vendor?
- What would be the reasons that Otis DID NOT outsource the development of e*Logistics?
- What’s a doctor-patient confidentiality?
- What is the Infrastructure Replacement (IR) project for at IVK?
- Why is this project not going well?
- Why did IVK select NetiFects for the IR project vendor?
- When selecting NetiFects, what homework did IVK do?
- How do you choose your mechanic? Based on what?
- If you did not do “due diligence” in finding an outsourcing vendor, what would happen to you?
- What would be your choice among the three vendors in Ch. 14?
Online discussion questions – Oct 17
- There is only one person at IVK who knows how the internal IT prices are calculated. What would be the risks? How could he/she abuse the system?
- Why is the slush fund at IVK problematic from the perspective of managerial (cost) accounting?
- If you’re Mr. Barton, how would you make the case for new security project funding to business unit managers?
- Any examples of public goods? (other than what we discussed in-class – defense, fresh air, public park, police, fire dept.)
- Any examples of Prisoner’s Dilemma (other than what we discussed in class)?
- If you are a professor, how would you make sure that everyone in a group project works hard and no one free-rides?
Week 7 – Cost of IT (II) – class slides and videos
Week 07 – Cost of IT (II) (color).pdf
Week 07 – Cost of IT (II) (bw).pdf
Chalk Talk – Tragedy of the Commons – NSF (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZDjPnzoge0)
What Is the Prisoner’s Dilemma – Scientific American (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUTWcYXVR5w)
ROI Homework #1 (due by Oct 21) (UPDATED)
MIS 3534 Fall 2016 – Homework #1.pdf
By mistake, I uploaded a solution file for ROI Homework #1. It is going to suffice to conduct three sensitivity analyses (a scenario summary, a one-variable data table, and a two-variable data table).
Videos for Excel Scenario Manager and Data Table
Create Scenarios in Excel – Codible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8IlCJupkdY)
Create a One-Variable Data Table in Excel – Codible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcmd0jO1Ngs)
Create a Two-Variable Data Table in Excel – Codible (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSA8OtB4zi0)
Grading of Executive Report #1 completed
Best Executive Report #1 – Nodir Zakhidov, Thompson Nguyen
Week 7 – IT Adventures Ch. 8 – Brief Guideline
- Why has Mr. John Cho’s request for IT security funding been being denied?
- Why had Mr. Davies, the former IVK CIO, had to set up a slush fund? How?
- By “one neck in the noose”, what does Maggie (Mr. Barton’s girlfriend) mean?
- What’s Mr. Barton’s decision regarding IT funding and what’s his rationale?
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