1. The CEO of a manufacturing company hires you as a consultant to help him to make a decision about building a new enterprise-wide information system. The CEO wants you to explain to him why insourcing would be a better choice to build a new information system than outsourcing.
2. The CEO of an insurance company hires you as a consultant to help her to make a decision about building a new enterprise-wide information system. The CEO wants you to explain to her why outsourcing would be a better choice to build a new information system than insourcing.
3. In Chapter 5, your textbook lists three e-commerce critical success factors: (1) Understand your business and your customers; (2) Find and establish relationships with customers; (3) Move money easily and securely. In the first activity of the planning phase for insourcing your textbook states that organizations typically track all the proposed systems and prioritize them based on business impact or critical success factors. A marketing company decides to insource a new information system and hires you as a consultant. You are required to list all critical success factors. Give one example of a critical success factor for this marketing company.
4. Why is it important to create a project scope document for systems development?
5. The image below shows a project plan for SDLC. Who might create such a plan? What is the purpose of this project plan?
6. A manufacturing company is insourcing a new information system. They are trying to get their knowledge workers involved in the project but they are young and inexperienced and no one is volunteering to help. The company hires you to help encourage the young knowledge workers to get involved. What will you say to them?
7. A service company is insourcing a new information system. Their IT specialists are very experienced but have never built an enterprise-wide system before. Once the project gets started it is clear that the IT specialists are not going to work well with the business experts. The IT specialists think they can build the system without the help of the business specialists. The company hires you to convince the IT specialist otherwise. What will you say to them?
8. In the design phase of the SDLC the IT specialists will design system models. Why do you think designing system models is important?
9. What is the purpose of the testing phase of the SDLC?
10. The CEO of a large company has hired you as a consultant during his company’s big insourcing project. The CEO is worried that something could go wrong during the project and hurt the company. You need to explain to the CEO which activities are most critical to the success of their system development.
11. The production department of a large company needs a small information system to help them perform key tasks. The company tells the department that their IT specialists are too busy and suggests that they build it themselves. The production department manager asks the young business experts in his department if they can build the small system but finds that they are lacking in confidence. The manager hires you to convince the business experts that they are capable of building the system. What will you say to them?
12. You have convinced the business experts in question 11 to take on the project and they ask you to advise them on what they need to do to ensure success of the small information system?
13. What is the relationship between selfsourcing and prototyping?
14. Why is it important to involve as many end users as possible in the prototyping process?
15. How can the prototype convince people in the department that the proposed system is worth their time?
