Managing Technology & Systems – Spring 2017
MIS 5402 – Prof. Min-Seok Pang

Monthly Archives: December 2016

Looking for Volunteers for Presentations or Mock Interviews for Jan 7 (will be given a waiver for one reading brief)

Published December 29, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.

For Jan 7, we need five volunteers for presentations and mock job interviews. The volunteers will be given participation credits and can skip one of the reading briefs (will receive a full credit for one brief).

Two volunteers will participate mock job interviews for a new CIO position at IVK. (I will provide guidelines and interview questions.)

  • One interviewee has to have majored IT, engineering, MIS, or related fields or have experiences in technology industries or IT development/management.
  • Another interviewee has to have any other business experiences.

Three volunteers will present one of the following recommended readings (for 5 minutes each). (I will provide guidelines.)

Posted in , , , ,

Session #2-3 – IT and Your Career – In-Class Discussion Questions

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • What’s “jobless recovery”? Why is this happening?
  • Why has the median family income not been rising while GDP was growing rapidly for the past 20 years?
  • What’s “skill mismatch”? Why is this happening?
  • What kind of jobs are vulnerable to technology development?
  • What kind of jobs are immune to technology development?
  • What would you say to your children about the impact of technology on jobs?
  • What would you say to your kid’s school principal about it?
  • What would you say to President-Elect Trump about it?
  • What would you say to yourself about it?
Posted in ,

Session #2-2 – IT-Driven Competitive Strategies – In-Class Discussion Questions

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • What bottleneck do Amazon.com and Netflix eliminate?
  • What is a Long Tail?
  • Why could Betterment and Wealthfront be disruptive?
  • Why are Uber and Airbnb disruptive?
  • What are the examples of one-sided network effects?
  • What are the examples of two-sided network effects?
  • Why do men pay more at a night club than women?
  • What happend to EJ? How serious is this incident to Airbnb?
  • What are the examples of online reputation systems in other platforms?
  • What are the policies in Uber to manage the pool of drivers?
  • Should Airbnb actually find out hosts who racially discriminate and ban them from participating the platform?
Posted in ,

Session #2-1 – IT Risk Management – In-Class Discussion Questions

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • 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?
  • What do we know for sure? What are the things that we are not sure?
  • Did an attacker or attackers intrude inside of IVK’s systems?
  • Why do you think this happened? If the security upgrade project was funded and completed, could IVK have prevented this completely?
  • What are the roles of board of directors in a business?
  • What would happen if a CIO or IT managers receive no adult supervision or control? What if he/she can handle IT in any way he/she wants?
  • What should be among the preventative policies and procedures for a failure due to personal devices?
  • What are the three recovery options that IVK IT group is considering?
  • What are the reasons to disclose the security incidents? What would be the reasons not to disclose?
  • Why has Mr. Williams decided to do nothing and not to disclose the incident? What was his thinking?
Posted in ,

Session #1- 3– Value and Cost of IT – In-Class Discussion Questions

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • How much do you think Otis has spent in Otisline and e*Logistics? How can we justify such a large amount of investments?
  • What are the business benefits of Otisline?
  • Who provides the IT budget at IVK? On what basis do the business units at IVK pay for IT?
  • Why had Mr. Davies, the former CIO, have to set up “slush funds”? How did he secure the slash funds?
  • Why is Mr. John Cho requesting an immediate funding on IT security? Why has the request for IT security funding kept being denied?
  • Do you know why there is no group assignment in this course?
  • What does Maggie, Mr. Barton’s girlfriend/consultant, mean by “one neck in the noose”?
  • How would you evaluate the IT funding process at VWoA? Is it better than the current process at IVK? How?
Posted in ,

Session #1-2 – IT and Competitive Strategies – In-Class Discussion Questions

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • What is a competitive strategy?
  • What is a sustainable competitive advantage?
  • What does it mean by a bargaining power of buyers?
  • If there are so many competitors in your industry or your market, what would you do to better compete with them?
  • According to the case, which business is more profitable? Elevator manufacturing or service? Why?
  • How often do you change your doctor? Why?
  • Can you think of an example of bundle around us? Why do firms sell a bundle?
  • What are the improvements in customer service from OTISLINE?
  • What is BHAG (p. 5)? Why is this “quantum leap improvement” (p. 5) necessary?
  • How were things going before e*Logistics? How now are things going after e*Logistics? What are the improvements from e*Logistics?
  • What do they mean by “the management of information flows” (p. 8)? Why is it important?
Posted in ,

Session #1-1 – Introduction – In-Class Discussion Questions

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • Why do you think MIS 5402 is a required course for Fox PMBA?
  • Amazon.com used to be an online retailer that sells stuff. Why did it start to make “stuff” in 2009?
  • What happened to Target in Dec 2013?
  • How likely is it that an IT disruption would happen to your company?
  • Which industry or company can operate without functioning IT in 2017?
  • Why do you hate your CIO or IT group at your company?
  • If you were Mr. Jim Barton, would you take the CIO offer from Mr. Williams?
  • Why did Mr. Davies warn Mr. Barton that he will not last more than a year?
  • Should a CIO be chosen among technically-trained managers or business-background managers?
  • Which skill is easier to learn? IT or Management?
  • What does it mean by “IT management is about management”?
  • What does it mean by “IT department is positioned to understand how the business works better than any other department”?
  • Why does a business need a CIO? What are the roles of a CIO in business? What are the qualifications of a CIO?
Posted in ,

Reading List for Session #2 (Jan 14)

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.

Session #2-1 – IT Risk Management

Session #2-2 – IT-Driven Competitive Strategies

Session #2-3 – IT and Your Career

Upon registration, a few articles are free at hbr.org and technologyreview.com.

Posted in

Reading List for Session #1 (Jan 7)

Published December 23, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.

Session #1-1 – Introduction

Session #1-2 – IT and Competitive Strategies

Session #1-3 – Value and Cost of IT

Upon registration, a few articles are free at hbr.org, cio.com, and sloanreview.mit.edu.

Posted in

Reading Brief Qs for Session 1-3 – IT Adventures Ch. 4, 5, and 8

Published December 21, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.
  • What is the funding mechanism for IT at IVK? What is a chargeback? (Ch. 4)
  • What are the concepts of “Competes vs. Qualifiers” and IT Strategic Grid (Ch. 5)
  • Why has Mr. John Cho’s request for IT security funding been being denied? (Ch. 8)
  • Why had Mr. Davies, the former IVK CIO, had to set up a slush fund? How? (Ch. 8)
Posted in ,

Reading Brief Qs for Session 1-2 – Otis Elevator

Published December 19, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.

Read Otis Elevator case from the Harvard Business School coursepack and explain the following three points in no more than 200 words.

  • What is the direction of Otis’ strategic move?
  • Why is Otis trying to shift its strategic focus?
  • How does e*Logistics support such a move?

This is due by 8:00 AM on Jan 7 (before the first day).

Posted in ,

Reading Brief Qs for Session 1-1 – IT Adventures Ch. 1 and 2

Published December 19, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.

Read Ch. 1 and 2 of “The Adventures of an IT Leader” and write answers to the following questions in no more than 200 words (for all three questions, not for each).

  • What happened to Jim Barton on Friday, March 23?
  • What did Barton learn from his web search after his “promotion”?
  • What did Bill Davies tell Mr. Barton when they encountered while jogging?

This is due by 8:00 AM on Jan 7 (before the first day).

Posted in ,

Welcome to MIS 5402 – Managing Technology & Systems

Published December 9, 2016 | By Min-Seok Pang, Ph.D.

Greetings,

I hope everyone is enjoying the end of 2016. My name is Min-Seok, and I will be teaching MIS 5402 in Spring 2017. I would like to wholeheartedly welcome you all to MIS 5402!

We will meet on Saturday, Jan 7 and 14 at 8am – 5pm at Center City Campus #622. Please find and read the attached syllabus and be prepared with the textbook and the required materials.

• The Adventures of an IT Leader (Updated Edition) – https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Leader-Updated-Preface-Authors-ebook/dp/B01BO6QMDW/
• Harvard Business Coursepack for MIS 5402 – http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/access/56799182

I would like to learn about your accomplishments and experiences before we meet. Please connect with me at LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/minspang

Once again, I’m very much excited to have you in MIS 5402. Enjoy the rest of the year, and I’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

Posted in
Categories
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
    Archives