Week Twelve

1. Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The above diagram shows the variables in triple constraint - Cost, scope and time. This is important in project management as all projects are limited by their constraints but still need to be clear and understandable.

If any of these variables change, it will affect at least one other immediately. For example when the scope of the project has been altered, the cost/resources of the project need to be reallocated as does the time (as it may be pushed further back). These three variables need to be balanced in order for the project to be successful.

2. Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

The PERT Chart (Program Evaluation and Review is a graphical network model depicting all the tasks of a project which need to be and have been taken, and the relationships within it. 

The other primary chart is the Gnatt Chart which shows the tasks which need to be finished in a simple bar graph against a calender form. This allows for time frames and are identified easily. 

3. Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success

a) People management: Employees need to understand the goals of the project and the tasks that they need to complete. It needs to be managed and controlled by the project manager to ensure that it is done correctly and on time as the project is exposed to human error.


b) Communications management: All communication needs to be given to the correct employees, as vital information may be needed to successfully implement the project.


c) Change management: Changes are due to arise during implementation of the project. Managers need to deal with these accordingly as the diagram in question 1 explains that changes can arise due to the change in scope, time or resources. 

4. Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed


Why projects fail: This mainly consists of when the goals of the project are not in line with the goals of the organisation. The project would then be a 'stand alone project' which is difficult to gain wide support for. Due to poor communication management, projects may fail as the employees may not fully understand the task at hand and thus will not be able to fulfill the objectives of the project. 


Why projects succeed: If the executive level of the organisation supports a project, the rest of the organisation is likely to follow resulting in employee input and thus improvements which may not have occurred without higher support. Another reason is when a good decision making structure has been implemented as it avoids inconsistencies in decisions.

Week Ten

1. What is your understanding of CRM?

CRM refers to customer relationship management. This relates to a business strategy allowing a company to manage their interactions with clients and other sales prospects. 

1. Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.
2. Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments
3. How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?
4. Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses
5. Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem
6. What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

Week Nine

1. Define the term operations management

Operations management refers to the background or operational tasks which turn inputs into outputs. 

2. Explain operations management’s role in business

Operations managers have a number of roles. Some include the forecasting of products etc in order to reach the demand of consumers, they make sure that there is enough inputs for production to meet demand, quality control is also a major role as is making the cost of the goods sold lower so the firm is more profitable (even though this is a more strategic role)

3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology

Visibility is increased as dead stock or too much inventory is reduced due to better integrated systems. This occurs as they can see the purchases in "real time".

4. Explain supply chain management and its role in a business

Supply chain management is the series of steps that goods or services go through, from upstream to downstream. Thus it is the flow of goods, information and finances. When there is a good supply chain, it creates a barrier to entry for other organisations trying to get into the market. It also allows organisations to supply demand more accurately. Below is a link explaining the supply chain in more detail.

http://www.conveyorss.com/supply-chain/

It is important for firms to manage their supply chains as it allows firms to keep track of their inventory.

5. List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

- Supplier: provides the manufactuer with goods and services in order for a product to be made. 
- Manufacturer: makes products for a businesses.
- Distributor: usually a company (but can be a person) who delivers goods to a retailer such as David Jones. 
- Retailer: The company who sells the product to consumers e.g. David Jones. 
- Customer: A person who consumes a product after purchase from the retailer. 

6. Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain

IT allows organisations to properly forecast for demand, provides greater visibility so organisations are able to see the stock present and can automatically resupply retailers due to "real time" purchases, organisations can see what times of the year have an increase or decrease in the demand for a product and can also reduce industry spikes. 

With the technology which allows an organisation to do this, they can gain a competitve advantage as Walmart has in the U.S. This is because of their supply chain management as their IT systems automatically replenish what has recently been purchased .

Week Eight

1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.


Firstly, wireless technology or communication is the transfer of information without the use of 'wires' (hence the name wireless). 


the benefits include access to information on a universal level, allows for business to be conducted at all hours of the day every day of the week and also allow for 'real time' transactions to be made. 

2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP


VoIP relates to voice calls occuring over the internet. Businesses are thus then able to communicate with their partners overseas and for businesses to expand internationally. It increases the speed in which things are done as communication between two parties is easier and quicker and also minimises costs due to online conferencing for example through Skype. 


3. Compare LANs and WANs


LANs refer to Local Area Networks where as WANs refer to Wide Area Networks. LANs allow people to connect a group of computers in a local area for example a house (if many computers are used) or a university. WANs are needed though for a state or country as it often connects smaller networks together. 

4. Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective.


RFID is Radio Frequenced Identification technologies which use chips to store unique identifiers. It can reduce costs as not as many employees are needed to scan items, and can check the progress of an item (for 
customers) which is going through the supply chain. 

5. Identify the advantages and disadvantage of deploying mobile technology

Advantages include ubiquity (smartphones can be used to surf the internet at any time and at most places), convenience (consumers are able to attain real-time data), instant connectivity (boot-up processes are not associated with mobile phone and their connectivity to the internet and thus it is not a problem), and customisation (this is easy as products or websites can be customised due to place and preferences)

Week Seven

1. List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information. Accuracy relates to the values and whether or not they are correct. So for example, whether the names of the candidates correct, and if thee are any spelling errors. Completeness relates to any missing values such as missing house numbers or street names Consistency refers to the summary information which is in agreement with detailed information. One example would consist of be is the total fields are equal to the true total of the individuals fields. Uniqueness refers to each transaction, entity and event and whether they are represented only one time in the information. So in other words, are there duplicate customers?  Timeliness relates to how current the information is in regards to the busines requirements. So is it updated daily, weekly or fortnightly. 2. Define the relationship between a database and a database management system. Databases consists of information regarding various types of objects such as inventory, transactions, people such as employees and places such as a warehouse.  Database management systems are programs used to manage a database and query a database. 3. Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database. Databases allow organisations to: Increase flexibility: databases deal with changes quickly and easily Increased scalability and performance: adapting to increased demand  is important and organisations are able to do this trhough the use of a database as it can quickly process transations etc.  Increased information security - Many security functions are available including passwords and access controls which means that unauthorised people are not able to use the database.  4. Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model. A relational database stores information in a two dimensional table. For example: The main concepts in this include entities (which are persons, places, things, events or transactions), attributes (which are the characteristics of an entity), keys (which is a field that uniquely identifies an entity in the database) and relationships (which is the foreign key that allows a user to search large amounts of data with one query). 5. Describe the benefits of a data-driven website. Development: The website owner is able to make any changes at any given time without (or with little) training in regards to updating the website. Content management: a static website is problematic mainly because the middleman (the programmer) is needed to make any updates to the data-driven website, slowing any changes which need to be made. Future expandability: The site is able to grow quickly when comparing a static website to a data-driven website Minimisation of human error: All information entered is correct due to "error tapping" Stability is increased: content cannot be lost and thus the data-driven website is a lot more stable. 6. Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organisation Both data warehouses and data marts are important to organisations as they are storage facilities for the large amount of data which is generated each business day. The warehouses keep information in a single repository allowing employees easy access to the data which will help them make a better informed business decision.The information is already sorted into the manner in which they need.

Week Six Questions

1. What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Information architecture is a general plan explaining how IT will be put to use within a particular organisation to identify important information. This includes customer records

Information infrastructure is the implementation of an IT system which provides methods to store information. E.g.hardware, software and services.

Both of these concepts are related as they are based on the implementation of an IT system in an organisation. Information architecture is clearly theoretical whereas information infrastructure is practical as it is the implementation of the product.

2. Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture

A solid information architecture can be implemented by focusing on the following:

• Backup and recovery
• Disaster recovery
• Information security systems

An organisation needs to be confident that their files would be able to be accessed after a security risk had been breached or had occurred. This can be attained through an available hot site and cold site and other hard drives/ systems which exist as a back up to the original data. Multiple  pre-tests should occur regularly to ensure that it works effectively. Antivirus softwares (example is Norton Antivirus) need to be installed with updates when needed.

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.

Flexibility: systems need to adapt to any changed which occurr in a business including a variety of languages and currencies.

Reliability: all systems are required to function correctly and provide accurate information so the right important business decisions can be made. 

Scalability: A system needs adaptability to respond to increasing demands.

Availability: This refers to how often employees, customers, and partners can access a system. High availability is a system that is operational for a long period of time.

Performance: measures how fast and accurate a system performs a process or transaction.

4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture

Service oriented architecture refers to an IT architectural business-driven approach. It supports the unification of services and tasks so the business goals and objectives are obtained.

This is valuable for a business as it makes certain that the IT systems used can adjust to changing business needs. When an organisation experiences a dilemna  there should be other methods in place for the goal to be reached.

There are three concepts of service oriented architecture including services (a business task), interoperability (two or more computer systems sharing resources and data) and loose coupling (the simple paths built between applications which can be added or removed easily at any time).

5. What is an event?

An indication from an electrionic message detecting threats, opportunities and alerts

6. What is a service?

A collection of commands which can be re-used.

7. What emerging technologies can companies can use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?

 Virtualisation can be utilised by organisations as:

• It is a new process which divides the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. 
• It can increase an organisations physical resources and inturn maximise their investment in the hardware
• The business’s IT costs will be reduced  by over 50%.
• It allows management to look at multiple physical storages in one system.

The main goal is to assemble administrative processes and also improve adaptability and work loads. It is thus beneficial for an organisation which requires two operating systems to run at the same time. 

Week Five Questions

Explain the ethical issues surrounding information technology.

The first thing one must understand is what ethics relates to. It is the standards and principles which determine how one will behave.


In regards to ethical issues which are affected by the advance in information technology, there are many examples. These include:

• Intellectual property
• Fair use doctrine
• Pirated software
• Counterfeit software
• Copyright issues

In reference to property, the ethical issues relate to who owns that creative or intellectual property. Pirated software relates to software which is being copied and/or distributed to others. Counterfeit software relates to a 'fake' program which is made to exact to or similar to the original software.

An example would be a non-genuine program of Microsoft Word.

Other major issues includes privacy as many users do not know the privacy regulations of each organisation, and how much the organisation can use or distribute. This also includes how much surveilance can be used through content filtering, security auditing or cookies. An example here would include Facebook as most users do not know that the organisation owns all the photo's which are uploaded and can use these at their disposal, it also includes employers scanning potential employee's facebook profiles before hiring them for a position.

Describe a situation involving technology that is ethical but illegal.

This refers to when a person believes they are acting in an ethical manner but in turn are acting illegally. The person may feel they are sharing with others, allowing for easy access to music etc in a youtube to mp3 converter.Although this is illegal, in their eyes it may be ethical.

Describe and explain one of the computer use policies that a company might employee

The anti-spam policy is a policy which enforces an organisation not to send unsolicited emails to customers in their database. Any organisation which uses spam will be blacklisted as it costs the customer money when they open the spam mail.

What are the 5 main technology security risks?

1. Human error – inefficient employees who do not finish or effectively complete their duties and requirements.


2. Natural disasters – This can leads to a destruction of the physical data or the computer systems which hold that information. For example the Japan earthquakes.


3. Technical failures – When the technology has a problem and ceases to work. This can be caused by software bugs and hardware crashes


4. Deliberate acts –  ‘White Collar Crime’ such as fraud can affect this.


5. Management failure – lack of procedure, documentation and training in the management sector as it can not be conducted efficienctly (especially when training new employees)

Outline one way to reduce each risk.

Human error - proficient training to avoid employees losing data records etc

Natural distasters - the introduction of external back up of the files included in the system

Technical failures - Anti Virus programs such an Norton Anti-Virus which protects your computer from viruses and bugs. The following website is the Norton Anti-Virus website which includes many attributes of the product. http://antivirus.norton.com/norton/ps/3up_au_en_navnis360.html?om_sem_cid=hho_sem_ic:au:ggl:en:e|kw0000056684

Deliberate acts - Strong penalties need to be imbedded in an organisation to reduce the probability of these security risks

Management failure - Training programs need to be efficient and reviewing employees regularly is of upmost importance to ensure they are working correctly.

What is a disaster recovery plan, what strategies might a firm employee?

Once a disaster has occured, organisations will hopefully regain access to computer systems and data. This process is called the disaster recover plan. Thus it is important that all organisations have a disaster recovery plan available to them in order to help them recover the data lost in a disaster. The plan should include:

• Communications plan – The methods and guides which an organisation needs to follow needs to be communicated within the organisation and externally.

• Business continuity – outline what would or could happen in a disaster and include how to deal with this.

• Location of Backup data – recovery testing needs to occur regularly and well documented procedures need to be included.