02:02 Identify one activity system known to you, and identify its key components.

Transcription

1 Exercises by Topics Paul Beynon -Davies: ebusiness Business systems:activity system Business systems:information system Data 02:02 Identify one activity system known to you, and identify its key components. 04:06 Take an area of human activity known to you, and determine what form of information system supports it. 04:06 Take an area of human activity known to you, and determine what form of information system supports it. Data:Privacy Decision-making Develop:Analysis 03:01 Find one other example of data known to you. Try to separate out issues of data (representation) from information (interpretation). In other words, try to identify the context and use for the data. 04:10 Try to identify the types of activity data that might be generated from an information system used to control manufacturing production. In what way might this information system update a human resource information system? What other information systems are likely to feed off a production system? 06:11 Determine how privacy is handled in a system known to you. 03:10 Consider a decision made in an organisation known to you. Work back from the decision to the information required to support it. What action resulted from the decision? 03:12 Give an example of how human decision making in business suffers from limited time and information. 12:05 What requirements elicitation techniques are most readily used in an organisation known to you and why? 12:06 List two actual requirements from some development project. 14 January 2013 Page 1 of 11

2 Develop:Conception 12:07 Perform a small use-case analysis of some information system known to you. Develop one scenario of use for a system. 12:01 Produce a list of some other benefits and/or costs associated with some information system. Categorise the costs and benefits in terms of tangible costs/benefits and intangible costs/benets. 12:02 Choose an intended information system. Try to assess its utility using one of the standard techniques such as return on investment. 12:03 Apply the three risk factors identified in this chapter to some project known to you. 12:24 In terms of some known information system, apply the information economics scorecard to the project. Develop:Construction 12:11 Find one example of each of the forms of testing described in this chapter. 12:12 Find some user documentation and describe its key elements. Develop:Design 12:08 Consider some information system known to you. Assess the degree to which the surrounding human activity system encourages job satisfaction. 12:09 Find one other example of the inter-dependence of information systems with human activity systems. 12:10 Assess the degree of stakeholder participation in some information systems project known to you. Develop:Implementation 12:14 Consider some information systems project. What approach to implementation was taken and why? 12:15 Determine a more complete analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each form of implementation strategy. 12:16 Assess the relative importance of data preparation and conversion to two ICT system projects known to you Develop:Maintenance 12:17 How much of some organisation s informatics service activity is taken up in maintenance? 12:18 What strategies has an organisation taken to manage maintenance activity more effectively? 12:19 Develop a brief configuration management strategy for a small-scale development. 14 January 2013 Page 2 of 11

3 Develop:Process Develop:Process:Product:Package Develop:Toolkit ebusiness:ecommerce ebusiness:ecommerce:b2b:eprocure ebusiness:ecommerce:b2c 12:04 Identify actual clients, end-users and customers for some project known to you. 12:20 See if you can find a completed information systems development project and describe the elements contained in the information system supporting the project. 12:21 Consider an organisation known to you. Investigate what percentage of development is bespoke and package. 12:22 Investigate whether development primarily occurs in a sequential or iterative manner in some organisation known to you. 12:23 Find some past information systems development project. Determine how closely the project undertook activities similar to the phases described in the life-cycle. 12:25 Identify actual clients, end-users and customers for some project known to you. 04:02 Take a company known to you, and identify whether it uses any software packages for supporting finance, sales, procurement or payroll. 12:13 Consider some ICT system. How many tools were used in its construction and for what purpose? 08:01 Determine whether an organisation known to you has adopted ecommerce. If so, attempt to determine the benefits it derives from it. If not, determine what benefits it might derive. 08:15 Examine and analyse the whole of or part of some procurement process known to you in terms of the time taken to complete activities. 08:16 Determine what forms of eprocurement are suitable for operational as opposed to production-related procurement. 08:02 Access a B2C site and attempt to assign the features you find to the phases of the customer chain. 08:03 Consider a company known to you. Determine at what stage it is in as far as B2C ecommerce is concerned. 08:04 Take a company known to you, and determine what information is searched for using the Internet. 14 January 2013 Page 3 of 11

4 ebusiness:ecommerce:b2c:crm ebusiness:ecommerce:b2c:emarket ebusiness:ecommerce:c2c ebusiness:ecommerce:p2p Environment:Costs:Coordination Environment:Economic control:hierarchy Environment:Economic control:market 08:05 Find a website for an SME in your local area. Determine how successfully it markets itself through the Internet. 08:06 Find a website with an online catalogue. Describe the features of the online catalogue. 08:08 Visit the Amazon.com site and attempt to determine what forms of customer profiling it employs. 08:17 Find one example of an emarket and describe its key stakeholders and features. 08:18 Find one example each of a vertical and horizontal Internet portal and describe their key features. 08:09 Investigate the range of CRM systems offered by vendors. 08:11 Produce a brief statement of the characteristics of a traditional promotional channel such as a television advert. Produce a brief statement of the characteristics of an e-marketing promotional channel such as a banner advertisement. 08:13 Access a particular web portal and determine what emarketing techniques are used. 08:14 Select a particular emarketing technique and try to determine the revenue model used. 08:10 Try to find an example of a community website and determine what content is provided on it. 08:19 Find one example of an interorganisational information system and analyse some of the reasons for its creation. 05:12 Try to determine the volume of monetary transactions occurring within a nation such as the United Kingdom in any one day. 07:05 Provide one example of an economic hierarchy and determine what established trading relationships exist in it. 07:06 Describe the actors, relationships, information and transactions in a segment of a market or hierarchy known to you. 14 January 2013 Page 4 of 11

5 Environment:Economy:Actors Environment:Economy:Production Environment:Value-chain 07:04 Provide one example of an economic market and describe what is exchanged in it. 07:06 Describe the actors, relationships, information and transactions in a segment of a market or hierarchy known to you. 07:07 Identify the competitors, customers and suppliers of an organisation known to you. 07:08 Describe some of the relationships between competitors, suppliers, customers and regulators in an industrial sector known to you. Determine the basis of competition and the state of technological deployment. Identify whether the industry is growing, shrinking or stable. 07:12 Choose an example of a commercial activity known to you. List the economic actors involved, the frequency of the activity and the type of product or service offered. 07:02 Identify the production and distribution processes in an industry known to you. 07:02 Identify the production and distribution processes in an industry known to you. 07:03 Identify the internal and external value chains relevant to a company or organisation known to you. Environment:Value-network 07:11 emedicine is a developing area of medical practice, and involves the remote treatment of patients using ICT. Experiments have even been undertaken in performing surgical operations using robotic devices controlled across communication networks. How would you class this form of service: tangible or intangible? 07:13 Try to model a public sector organisation in terms of activities of the internal value chain. 07:03 Identify the internal and external value chains relevant to a company or organisation known to you. 07:14 Identify the elements of the customer chain and supply chain of an organisation known to you. Evaluation 07:15 When you purchase a product through mail order, attempt to identify the flow of data transactions that accompanies the purchase. 09:04 In terms of strategic, summative and formative evaluation, what are we evaluating: usability, functionality or utility? 09:05 Provide an example of strategic, formative and summative evaluation. 14 January 2013 Page 5 of 11

6 ICT:Database system ICT:Database system:dbms ICT:Software:Enterprise software:erp ICT:Software:Open source software ICT:System Informatics:Management Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:EDI Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:Extranet Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:Internet 06:08 Identify core database systems in an organisation known to you. 06:15 Consider an ICT system known to you. Attempt to estimate the volume of data stored in the system. 06:16 Investigate the range of contemporary DBMS used in a specific organisation. 06:17 Find an organisation that has adopted a mega-package. Why did the organisation decide to implement the package? What experience have they had of using it for their infrastructure? 06:14 Investigate what software is available under the open software movement. 06:01 Find an ICT system, and analyse it in terms of the four-layer model described in this chapter. Is the ICT system distributed in any way? Which model of distribution best approximates its architecture? 06:09 Determine whether an application known to you uses an n-tier client - server architecture. 10:06 Provide an example of each of the activities listed under managing the information, information systems or ICT infrastructure. 05:10 Find an example of the use of EDI in a key industrial sector. 05:09 Choose an organisation and determine its use of the Internet. Does it have an intranet and extranet? 06:10 Determine whether an organisation known to you uses an extranet. Attempt to determine the functionality of the extranet. 14 January 2013 Page 6 of 11

7 Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:Intranet Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:Networks Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:Web Infrastructure:ICT:Comms:XML Infrastructure:ICT:eDelivery:Access channels 05:06 If you use a computer on some network try to determine the IP address of the computer. 05:09 Choose an organisation and determine its use of the Internet. Does it have an intranet and extranet? 06:04 Try to find an organisation that maintains both an Internet and intranet website and determine how they differ. 05:09 Choose an organisation and determine its use of the Internet. Does it have an intranet and extranet? 06:04 Try to find an organisation that maintains both an Internet and intranet website and determine how they differ. 06:05 Determine whether an organisation known to you uses an intranet. Attempt to determine its functionality. 05:03 Consider a computer network known to you. Identify the types of communication media used to connect it. 05:04 Investigate the communication networks used by an organisation known to you. Are there elements of LANs, and WANs in their communication infrastructure? 05:05 Determine the topology and coverage of a computer network known to you. 05:07 Investigate some of the other common tags used in a HTML document. 05:08 Classify a website known to you according to whether it solely provides information content, allows querying or enables transactions. 05:15 Investigate how academic material such as a textbook may be presented via the Web. 05:16 Determine how many distinct browsers there are in existence and how they differ in their functionality. 06:06 Take one website known to you and attempt to determine whether database integration is used and in what way. 05:11 Find an example of the use of XML in a key industrial sector. 05:01 In face-to-face communication, what are the access device and channel? 05:02 Does a company known to you use any mobile devices to access systems? What type of systems are accessed through them? 14 January 2013 Page 7 of 11

8 Infrastructure:ICT:eDelivery:Front-end Infrastructure:ICT:ICT systems Infrastructure:ICT:ICT systems:payment systems 04:11 Try to identify some of the purposes that the data collected by a customer relationship management system might be used for. 06:03 Classify a website known to you in terms of whether it solely provides information content, allows querying or enables transactions. 06:02 Consider an organisation s ICT infrastructure. How closely integrated are the systems? How much distributed processing and/or data is present in the infrastructure? 05:14 Investigate the uptake of non-credit-based payment systems in an area of interest to you. Infrastructure:Informatics Infrastructure:IS Infrastructure:IS:Back-end Infrastructure:IS:Front-end 06:07 If you have made any payments online, determine how sites inform you that they are secure. Determine the confidence you place in the security of such sites. 04:07 Take an organisation known to you, and determine the ways in which ICT has been used to supplant, support or innovate activity. 04:01 Take a company known to you, and determine what are its core information systems. Determine the degree to which these systems are integrated. 04:15 Consider a future situation in which corporations become involved in mining asteroids within the solar system. Would the information systems infrastructure of such corporations be different from the one discussed in this chapter? 10:05 Determine whether an organisation known to you has an organisation information model and process model. 04:04 Try to provide more detail on one chosen process from a system in the core information systems infrastructure, such as the calculate pay process in the payroll subsystem. Draw an information systems model for this process. 04:08 Identify a management information system in an organisation known to you and try to determine its functionality. 14 January 2013 Page 8 of 11

9 Modelling:Information system Organisation:Theory Project management 04:09 Take a public sector organisation such as a local authority. Try to identify the key front-end information systems relevant to it. 04:12 Consider the management-facing information systems of an organisation known to you. Is it possible to identify distinct EIS and MIS? Develop a high-level information model of the information held in the EIS or MIS. 04:13 Investigate the distinction between EIS, DSS and MIS in more detail. Investigate the role of data warehousing and data mining within such systems. 04:16 Produce a brief description of the functionality of one or more of the customer-facing, supplier-facing or employeefacing information systems of a company in the services rather than the manufacturing sector. 04:05 Draw a model of another information system associated with a process known to you,such as student admissions at a university. 04:14 Find a company close to you. Take along one or more of the generic information systems models discussed in this chapter. Compare the operations of the company to those described on the model. How closely do they match? In what ways are they different? 02:11 Provide an example of the process of structuration (other than those given in this chapter) and discuss its importance. 13:01 Consider an organisation known to you. Use one or more of the perspectives from organisation theory to characterise the organisation. For instance, would you class it as bureaucratic (mechanistic) or organic? 11:06 At what point do you think a critical mass is reached in project group size? 11:07 Discuss three of the main problems arising in the management of large project groups. 11:09 What sort of timings, effort and resource information should be kept in an organisation s project experience base? 11:10 Even the most carefully planned of projects fail. Suggest some reasons. Semiotics 03:02 Find some visual sign used within business. Try to separate out what the sign is from what it represents. In other words, analyse its semantics. 03:03 Consider one contemporary facility on the Internet such as chat rooms or discussion boards in terms of the classic elements of a communication. 14 January 2013 Page 9 of 11

10 Social network Social network:social capital Strategy:Informatics:Information system Systemics:System Systemics:System:Control Systemics:System:Control:Feedback:Negative 03:05 All the inputs to and outputs from information systems can be regarded as signs. Give some examples of semantic problems that might arise in interpreting signs from information systems. Discuss the problems involved in individuals and groups misinterpreting signs. 03:06 Consider the Highway Code as a sign system. What human activity does it support? Provide some examples of signs, rules and behaviour. 03:07 Select and analyse a written communication in terms of the distinction between pragmatics, semantics, syntactics and empirics. 03:09 s often use emoticons, signs such as -:) which convey emotional content. Investigate their range and use, and analyse them in terms of concepts from semiotics. 07:17 List a number of the social networks in which you participate. How are you linked to other members? Would you describe the ties as strong or weak? 07:16 If you live in what you would class as a community, investigate how much social capital exists in it. Determine the evidence for this. 10:11 Consider an information system known to you. In what respect would you define it as strategic, and why? 10:12 Find one example of a modern strategic information system in the cost leadership, differentiation or niche strategy. 10:13 Find one example of a system which can be regarded as strategic but which is built on existing informatics infrastructure. 02:04 Consider an educational organization such as a school or university as a system. Try to identify some possible subsystems. 02:05 There are various ways of classifying systems besides open or closed. Try to identify a number of other system types and give examples of each type. 02:03 Investigate the control processes you would expect in an organisation such as a university. What are the appropriate sensors, comparators and effectors in this control process? 14 January 2013 Page 10 of 11

11 Systemics:System:Performance Value Value:Flow:Intangible goods 02:09 Negative feedback is frequently used to maintain the homeostasis of a system. Investigate the term homeostasis in greater detail and report on your findings. 02:08 Consider university teaching as a process and suggest some appropriate measures for assessing the efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness of it. 07:09 In relation to the commercial activities associated with a product or service known to you, try to jot down what the four phases of commerce represent. 08:07 Make a list of the types of goods you can order over the Internet and what you cannot. Reflect on the types of products characteristic of markets and hierarchies. 14 January 2013 Page 11 of 11