Material covered : P & S chapters 1- 6, 11 and 12, TWIF chapters 1-3 and Cases 1 (Does
IT Matter), 2 (Lands End), 3 (FBI), 4 (Legal Truth or Consequences), 5 (Telecom Eirann)
+ the supplemental material linked to the syllabus
Exam question types :
1 Process definition question: read a short paragraph describing a system and create a BPMN diagram from it. All actors, activities, decisions and flows must be shown. This question is worth 12.5 points. (cf. Basic BPMN Tutorial)
1 Data definition question: read a short paragraph describing a system and create an Entity-Relationship diagram corresponding to the description. All entities, relationships and the cardinality (1 to many, etc.) of the relationship must be specified. Attributes sufficient to create any reports mentioned in the system description must be written next to the entities they describe. This question is worth 12.5 points. (cf. Alter, Chapter 4)
3 or 4 essay questions @ <variable> points each . The number of questions given depends on the amount of detail each question merits. Each question will have a point value based on its importance. This point value should be used as an indicator of how much time to spend on the question. Most questions will specify that certain terms must be used meaningfully in answering the question and may specify comparison with certain aspects of the cases we have covered. The more concepts and appropriate terminology from the text and cases that are brought into the essays, the higher the grade!
Textbook Inventory System (Review Process Model)
Given the following narrative description, draw a BPMN diagram for the portion of the activities described.
The purpose of the TEXTBOOK INVENTORY SYSTEM at a campus bookstore is to supply textbooks to students for classes at a local university. The university’s academic departments submit initial data about courses, instructors, textbooks and projected enrollments to the bookstore on a TEXTBOOK MASTER LIST. The bookstore generates a PURCHASE ORDER, which is scent to publishing company’s supplying textbooks.
Book orders arrive at the bookstore accompanied by a PACKING SLIP, which is checked and verified by the receiving department. Students fill out a BOOK REQUEST that includes course information. When they pay for their books the students are given a
SALES RECEIPT.

Fleet Maintenance (Review Data Model)
The IT group at UNR wants to develop a Fleet Maintenance application for all the vehicles used by the facilities maintenance groups at the university. Help them design the database using Entity-Relationship notation.
One or at most a few drivers drive each vehicle. The system should track each repair and preventative maintenance action that is made to the vehicle. Some of the reports to be derived from the system are:
Total Cost of Ownership (including maintenance) for each vehicle
Average cost per vehicle type (truck, fork lift, etc.)
Average cost per vehicle make (Honda, Ford, etc.)
How many trips were made to Carson City and what % of total mileage per vehicle was this mileage?
Do repair costs correlate with driver to any extent? i.e. we need to be able to see if driver
X uses vehicle Y most of the time and vehicle Y has disproportionately high repair costs
(this is one of the primary functions of a Fleet Maintenance system.)
Essay question examples:
Example 1: The Fargus Benevolent Fund is a regional specialty insurance company providing weekly-premium health insurance primarily to lower-income customers. They currently operate on a large mini-computer system that they have had for 18 years (with upgrades). All computing is handled at the home office where the mini resides. Agents in multiple cities keep many records themselves in paper ledgers and periodically mail or fax reports to the home office. The system tracks customers, payments and benefits and also performs organizational administrative computing such as payroll, commission tracking, GL and AP. The mini will continue to be supported by its manufacturer for some time, and the software works adequately for what it does. However some executives in the organization want to totally revamp the current computing infrastructure. Others oppose this move. Make compelling arguments for BOTH positions. Your discussion should be couched in terms of (at a minimum) business process reengineering , change management , and short and long term strategic and tactical advantage .
Example 2: Your Vice President is concerned that other firms in your industry may be using IT in such a way that your organization may find itself at a competitive disadvantage. He has asked you to prepare a paper identifying the issues associated with using IT for competitive advantage . He is quite concerned that any advantage that IT may confer would be purely temporary. Advise him based on any and all class materials dealing with IT and competitive advantage.
Example 3: The president of X company, foremost manufacturer of Ydgets in Nevada found a copy of The World is Flat on an empty seat beside him on a long flight from

Brussels. Now he is literally panting to participate in the flat world. Based on the engineering and manufacture of Ydgets, how would you advise him? [In the exam you will be advised of what a Ydget is and how it is designed, manufactured and marketed.]
What are the potential benefits and pitfalls of outsourcing the various functions of his organization? What technology will the organization need to participate; what skills?
Example 4: I will concoct a micro case that can benefit from knowledge management and/or business analytics . What are the pros and cons and potential problems and success factors of the required technology in the specific context of the micro case? The context will probably involve some form of distributed organization which will require you to speak intelligently about distributed architectures for data collection. Bring in material from both Ch. 12 in the text, the two cases at the end of the chapter and applicable sections of TWIF.
Example 5: I will concoct a micro case that describes a high-impact system implementation in a small enterprise conducted in a manner that is technically correct but inappropriate for the company culture. Many bad effects follow the implementation including very high personnel turnover. Discuss the problems and possible solutions in terms of human vs. machine centered design, socio-technical factors, impacts of computerization on the workplace, deskilling, retraining, change management, employee involvement, commitment, resistance. . .
Example 6:
Design an Enterprise Architecture and Infrastructure for Org X
[ Information on Org X: what they do, how they do it, where they do it, their current IT architecture and infrastructure and their long and short term business strategy .]
Design an IT architecture and an infrastructure for Org X that will support their current operations and that will cost effectively scale to encompass their mid-term vision for the organization (as expressed above).
Structure your answer under five separate headings (bullet points are better than long, rambling narrative):
1.
Strategic goals
2.
Business requirements (from strategic goals)
[Use the Hardware/Software/Network/Data analysis framework from the textbook for 3 and 4.]
3.
Architecture (high level specifications to satisfy business requirements)
4.
Infrastructure ( high-level suggestions for implementation of the architecture – that is
types of hardware and software required. Note that you do not have enough information to give detailed specifics. The answer to this question will be in the form of suggestions OR questions that need to be answered to make the implementation determination.
)

5.
Discussion of how the final infrastructure satisfies both the current and midterm IT requirements of the organization. List and justify all key assumptions.
General Caveats
Keeping your discussions at purely a strategic, managerial level will lead me to believe that you have not completed the readings and can not supply appropriate technical details.
Further, each of the text chapters develops a specific vocabulary for discussion of the topic of interest. For example, the KM chapter (12) uses tacit and explicit knowledge, knowledge transfer, business experimentation, etc.
If you don’t use the appropriate vocabulary I must assume you aren’t aware of it.