MIS Final Exam
Socialization vs. Combination
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(CH10) What are one or two major challenges in information systems development?
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(CH2) How do Info Systems impact business processes?
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(CH2) What are the limitations of automation?
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(CH2) What are two or three characteristics of good information?
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(CH2) What is the role of automation and transformation in business processes?
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(CH2) Why do organizations need to consider business processes?
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(CH3) Know about Info Systems as a competitive enabler. Product vs. Systems. How can Info Systems affect product? How can info systems affect systems?
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(CH3) What are the responses to Porter forces? What types of strategies might an organization use? How does Info Systems help with implementing these strategies? Know an example.
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(CH3) What is the importance and general process of aligning IT strategies with organization strategies?
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(CH3) What is the role of information systems?
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(CH7) How do inherent processes help companies?
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(CH7) Know how to response to the challenge of implementing enterprise systems
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(CH9) How can businesses use leverage expert systems?
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(CH9) How can knowledge management systems provide a competitive advantage?
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(CH9) How does a data warehouse help business users?
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(CH9) What are common types and roles of various types of reports from reporting systems
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(CH9) What are the benefits and advantages of having a lot of data?
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(CH9) What are the costs and disadvantages of having a lot of data?
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(CH9) What is one challenge faced in implementing knowledge management systems?
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(CH9) Why is business intelligence a critical focus area for businesses?
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Know one of two dimensions of knowledge (leverage / fragmentation)
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Process vs. Practice approach. When is each appropriate?
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(CH7) What are information silos?
A condition that exists when data are isolated in separated information systems
(CH9) What is a data warehouse? Where does the data come from?
A facility that prepares, stores, cleans, and manages data specifically for reporting and data mining. The information comes from operational systems and purchased data.
(CH3) What is a value chain?
A network of value-creating activities
(CH10) What is information systems development?
A series of methodologies and procedures can be used to further develop information systems. One approach being used by many is the SDLC (systems development life cycle) -system definition -requirements analysis -component design -implementation -maintenance
What are the advantages and challenges of cloud computing?
Advantages - cost efficient (avoid licensing fees) - basically unlimited storage - back up and recovery -easy to access and integrate information Disadvantages - technical issues - security issues (prone to attack)
(CH8) What are the key roles of SMIS Roles and what each role is responsible for?
An information system that supports the sharing of content among networks of users. The three roles: -User communities *formed based on mutual interests and specific boundaries -Social media sponsors *companies and other orgs that choose to support a presence on one or more social media sites -Social media application providers *companies that operate the social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
(CH2) What are the key components of business processes?
Business processes - a network of activities for accomplishing a business function
(CH3) What is the role of strategy in business organizations? (4 types)
Businesses choose one of four strategies in order to be competitive in certain markets. 1.) Cost leader (lowest prices) 2.) Focus on adding value to products to differentiate from competition 3.) Employ cost or differentiation strategy across an industry 4.) Focus its strategy on a particular industry segment
(CH10) Know the advantages and disadvantages of the pilot implementation approach.
Company implements the entire system on a limited portion of the business. Advantage is that if the system fails, the failure is contained within a limited boundary.
(CH8) What is user-generated content? Know one or two risks associated with it.
Data and information that is provided by users. Examples are product rating, product problem solutions, product designs, and marketing data. Risks - inappropriate content & unfavorable reviews
(CH9) How does a data mart differ from a data warehouse?
Data mart - a data collection, smaller than the data warehouse, that addresses the needs of a particular department or functional area of the business. Users in the data mart obtain data that pertain to a particular business function from the data warehouse.
(CH9) What are the advantages of a data mart over a data warehouse?
Data marts are more specified towards particular departments or functional areas of a business. Data marts produce data more quickly and at less of a cost than data warehouses.
(CH8) How does social media affect defenders of belief vs. seekers of truth?
Defenders of belief - a kind of community whose members share a common belief and form their hive around that belief. Seek conformity and want to convince others of the same. More opinion-based. Use social media to back their opinions and attempt to convince others of the same thing. Seekers of truth - a kind of community whose members share a common desire to learn something, solve a problem, or make something happen. More logistical. Look for more information to find the truth through the use of social media.
(CH7) Know 1-2 challenges of implementing enterprise systems.
Enterprise systems are info systems that span an organization and support activities of people in multiple departments. They have hundreds to thousands of users. A challenge of implementing an enterprise system is its vast size. Since enterprise systems support entire organizations, these systems must be carefully planned, and cautiously implemented to incorporate the correct data.
(CH9) What is ETL processing? Why is this important?
Extracting, Transforming, Loading - Process in data warehousing responsible for pulling data out of the source systems and placing it into a data warehouse. ETL processing is important because it provides a standardized approach to transforming unstructured data so that it can be more easily integrated with structural data.
(CH3) What is the Porter Model (Competitive forces) and impact on an organization?
Five forces model - help organizations determine the potential profitability of an industry used as a way of understanding organizations' competitive environments. Identifies how sustainable that profitability will be. Also to identify sources of strong competition and use that knowledge to create a competitive strategy to combat those strong force. Competitive & Supply Chain Bargaining Power Competitive -competition from vendors of substitutes -competition from new competitors -competition from existing rivals Bargaining Power Forces -bargaining power of suppliers -bargaining power of customers
What are the five components of an information system?
Hardware, Software, Data, Procedures, People
(CH11) What is the role of the CTO in an organization?
Heads the technology group of a company. Evaluates new technologies and ideas. Requires deep knowledge of information technology. EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
How do Info Systems address the challenge of big data? Impacts of variety? velocity? and volume?
Huge volume, rapid velocity, and great variety. Use a system like MapReduce to sorta relevant data.
(CH9) What are some characteristics of dirty data? What are the risks?
Inaccurate, incomplete, or erroneous data. These flaws make working with this data hard to do. The risks are that it can render a database ineffective because of the problematic data entered.
(CH1) Compare information systems vs. information technology.
Information Technology (IT) : the products, methods, inventions, and standards that are used for producing information Information Systems (IS) : A group of components that interaction to crease information. IT drives the development of new IS
(CH7) How does a company avoid information silos?
Integrate the data into a single database and revise applications (and business processes) to use the database.
(CH2) What is the difference between data, information, and knowledge?
Knowledge is information we know, data is facts of the world, information helps us expand our knowledge. Data is turned into information which in turn is turned into knowledge
(CH1) Why is Moore's Law important?
Moore's Law is important because it talks about how exponential change and improvement is inevitable and affects all aspects of businesses.
(CH10) Know the advantages and disadvantages of the phased implementation approach
New system is installed in phases across the organization. Once that phase is complete and successful, the company moves onto the next one. Disadvantage is that some systems are so tightly integrated, they can't use phased.
(CH10) Know the advantages and disadvantages of the parallel implementation approach
New system runs in parallel with old one until the new system is tested and successful. Advantage is that it provides easy fallback position is the new system fails. Disadvantage is that it is slow and expensive to run two systems.
(CH7) Distinguish between the different types of information systems
Personal - info systems used by a single individual Workgroup - system that facilitates the activities of a group of people (departmental / functional) Enterprise - info systems that span an organization and support activities of people in multiple departments. Inter-prise - info systems that are shared by two or more independent organizations
(CH3) What are some distinctions between primary and support activities in a value chain? What is the role of linkages within the value chain?
Primary activities - business functions that relate directly to the production of the organization's products or services. Secondary activities - business functions that assist and facilitate the primary activities Linkages - interactions across value activities that add value.
(CH11) What is the role of CIO in an organization?
Principal manager of the IS department. Communicates with executive staff on IT and IS related matters
(CH10) Know one type of feasibility study and its importance
Schedule feasibility - difficult to determine because it is hard to estimate the time it will take to build the system. Cost feasibility - assessment of the cost of a project, often difficult to assess, depends on the scope of the project.
(CH10) What are the major activities of the five phases of the SDLC?
Systems Development Life Cycle - System definition - Requirements analysis - Component design - Implementation - Maintenance
What is the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge?
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge people carry in their minds and is hard to access by others and externalize. Very valuable. Not often shared Explicit knowledge is information that is documented and can be easily transferred to others.
(CH7) What is business process reengineering?
The activity of altering and designing business processes to take advantage of new information systems.
(CH9) What does data mining accomplish? What is the business value?
The application of statistical techniques to find patterns and relationships among data and to classify and predict. Data mining techniques are sophisticated and hard to use, but very valuable in analyzing data for companies. There is unsupervised data mining : analysts do not create a model or hypothesis before running the analysis, and there is supervised data mining : data miners develop a model prior to the analysis and apply statistical techniques to data to estimate parameters of the model.
(CH1) What is Moore's Law
The idea that because of technological improvements regarding electronic chip design, the cost of data communication and data storage is essentially zero
(CH10) Know the advantages and disadvantages of the plunge implementation approach
The organization shuts off the old system and starts the new system. Disadvantage is that it is the most risky installation process. If something goes wrong, all the company can do it try to fix the system or go back to the old one, both of which are costly and time-consuming.
(CH3) How does strategy translate into action?
The organization will know what action to take depending on which competitive strategy they choose.
(CH7) What are inherent processes?
The procedures that must be followed to effectively use licensed software. For example, the processes inherent in MRP systems assume that certain users will take specified actions in a particular order. In most cases, the organization must conform to the processes inherent in the software.
(CH8) What is crowdsourcing? Know an example
The process by which organizations use social media technologies such as user-generated content to involve their users in the design and marketing of their products. Example "My Starbucks Idea" - submit ideas for starbucks products or community initiatives
(CH9) What is business intelligence?
The process of operational data to create information that exposes patterns, relationships, and trends of importance to the organization.
(CH7) Why do companies use business process reengineering?
To take full advantage of new capabilities and technologies available to companies.
What are the challenges in the conversions between tacit and explicit knowledge?
Transferring explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge isn't necessarily difficult with memorization and familiarizing oneself with the documented information. However, converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge is difficult because it is often difficult to access information solely contain in one's mind. People have a hard time expressing this knowledge when conversing with others.
How do you convert from explicit to tacit knowledge and tacit to explicit knowledge?
Transmit Tacit --> Explicit -personal contact, conversation Transmit Explicit --> Tacit -through studying aids such as data, graphs, books, documented information -memorization
(CH7) Why do information silos occur?
When entities at one organizational level create information systems that meet their particular needs only (specific to a singular department)
(CH1) How are the computer side of IS (hardware, software, and data) related to the people side of IS (people and procedures)?
Without the people side of IS there would be no input to stimulate the output. Without a person, there would be no one to carry out procedures. Therefore, hardware would never be used to access software and extract data.
What is the Internet of Thing. Explain the application
a proposed development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data without requiring human-to-human interaction.
(CH1) What is the role of automation in information systems?
system by which information is processed for collection and distribution through a series of automated processes
