Test 4 Management Info Systems

On average, private sector IT projects are underestimated by ________ percent in terms of budget and time required to deliver the complete system promised by the system plan.

50

Which of the following statements about the challenges posed by global information systems is not true?

A grand design approach is the most effective way to implement a transnational system.

Which of the following occurs as a firm moves from local option systems to regional and global systems?

Agency Cost Increase

________ provide(s) a methodology and tools for dealing with the organization's ongoing need to revise and optimize its numerous business processes.

BPM

As discussed in the chapter case, Tommy Hilfiger used which of the following to transform its wholesale sales process?

Business process redesign

Which of the following offers the highest reward but also the most substantial chance of failure?

Business process redesign

Much of the final assembly of Apple's iPhone occurs in which of the following locations?

China

All of the following are intangible benefits of information systems except:

Cost reduction

Which of the following is not an important technology issue to consider when developing an international information system?

Developing a global knowledge base

Which of the following is not a specific challenge to global business systems?

Different social expectations

A prototype is a working version of an information system that serves as the final version

False

In a transnational strategy, financial management is centralized while production and sales are decentralized.

False

Legal practices are largely standard among developed countries.

False

Objects are grouped into hierarchies, and hierarchies into classes.

False

The cost of a project is based solely on the time to complete a project multiplied by the cost of computer resources required to complete the project.

False

The rate of growth in the Internet population is far faster in North America and Europe than it is in Africa and the Middle East.

False

Today, knowledge, education, science, and industrial skills are highly concentrated in North America, Western Europe, and Japan.

False

User concerns and designer concerns are usually the same at the beginning of the project but may diverge later as the system is built.

False

Which type of planning tool shows each task as a horizontal bar whose length is proportional to the time required to complete it?

Gantt chart

Which of the following is not a specific business factor in the global environment?

Global communication and transportation technologies

A firm in the finance industry should do which of the following to ensure that it stays current with technology?

Have a few high-risk, high-benefit projects

The domestic exporter strategy is characterized by which of the following?

Heavy centralization of corporate activities in the home country of origin

You have been hired by a firm in a non-information-intensive industry to evaluate its inventory of systems and IT projects. Which types of projects should the firm focus on?

High-benefit, low-risk projects

As described in the text, which of the following statements about runaway or failed IT projects is not true?

IT projects often fail because they lack sufficient computing capacity.

Which of the following strategies represents the proper approach to a low risk, high reward project?

Identify and develop

Which of the following refers to all organizational activities working toward the adoption, management, and routinization of a new information system?

Implementation

Which of the following is not one of the principal challenges of international networks?

Inability of companies to create a global intranet for internal communications.

Which of the following serves as a road map indicating the direction of systems development, the rationale, the current systems, new developments to consider, the management strategy, the implementation plan, and the budget?

Information systems plan

Which of the following statements about the user-designer communications gap is not true?

Information systems specialists prefer systems that are oriented toward solving business problems or facilitating organizational tasks.

Enhanced employee goodwill falls under what category of costs and benefits of information systems?

Intangible benefits

Which of the following is not one of the primary types of firm strategy discussed in the chapter?

International exporter

Which of the following statements about objective-oriented development is not true?

It is less iterative and incremental than traditional structured development.

Which of the following industries is most affected by globalization?

Manufacturing

What is the most significant barrier to successful business process change?

Organizational culture

Which conversion process introduces the system first to a limited portion of the organization?

Pilot study strategy

Which of the following statements about objects is not true?

Programs pass data to procedures which then send a message to the object.

Which of the following would not be covered in the Management Strategy section of an information systems plan?

Progress reports

Which of the following statements best describes the effect that project structure has on overall project risk?

Projects with relatively undefined goals are more likely to be subjected to users changing requirements and to run a higher risk of not satisfying project goals.

Which of the following statements about prototyping is not true?

Prototyping is least useful when there is some uncertainty about requirements or design solutions.

A software package evaluation process is often based on a series of detailed questions sent to vendors, called a(n):

RFP

Which of the following business functions is not centralized in the domestic exporter business strategy?

Sales/marketing

Which method is used to assign weights to various features of a system?

Scoring model

In what stage of systems development are design specifications created?

System design

Unit Testing

Test each program separately

Which of the following is not a hidden cost of offshore outsourcing?

The cost of skilled programmers

Which of the following statements about connectivity in relation to global systems is not true?

The public Internet guarantees a basic level of service

Automation is the most common form of IT-enabled organizational change.

True

Documentation reveals how well a system works from both a technical standpoint and end-user standpoint.

True

Firms that can organize globally have a powerful strategic advantage.

True

Global systems allow fixed costs to be amortized over a much larger customer base.

True

In a transnational business strategy, there is a strong central management core of decision making but considerable dispersal of power throughout the global divisions.

True

Intangible benefits may lead to quantifiable gains in the long run.

True

More timely information is an intangible benefit of information systems.

True

One major telecommunications challenge in an international setting is making data flow seamlessly across networks shaped by disparate national standards.

True

Process improvement requires continual change.

True

Project management refers to the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to achieve specific targets within specified budget and time constraints.

True

Risk is an important variable that project management must deal with.

True

Structured development methods are process-oriented

True

Structured methods treat data and processes as logically separate entities.

True

Success as a change agent depends on legitimacy, authority, and ability to involve users in the change design process.

True

The design of business processes is a major dimension in developing an international information systems architecture.

True

The growth of international trade has radically altered domestic economies around the globe.

True

The growth of powerful communications technologies and the emergence of world cultures create the condition for global markets.

True

The systems analyst is the catalyst for the entire change process and is responsible for making sure that everyone involved accepts the changes created by a new system.

True

The systems life cycle methodology maintains a formal division of labor between end users and information systems specialists.

True

Which of the following countries has the second-highest percentage of its total population using the Internet?

United States

Which of the following should drive the entire system-building effort?

User information requirements

Which of the following types of projects have a higher likelihood of failure?

Very large-scale or complex systems projects

To understand and define the contents of data flows and data stores, system builders use:

a data dictionary

During the ________ stage of system development, systems tests are evaluated by users and reviewed by management.

acceptance testing

In the traditional systems life cycle, end users:

are limited to providing information requirements and reviewing the technical staff's work.

The four kinds of structural organizational change enabled by IT, in order from least to most risky, are:

automation, rationalization, redesign, and paradigm shift

________ methods rely on measures of cash flows into and out of the firm.

capital budgeting

New levels of global coordination of all of the major business functions permit the location of business activity according to:

comparative advantage

External integration tools:

consist of ways to link the work of the implementation team with users at all organization levels.

When developing a global system, bringing the opposition of local groups into the process of designing and implementing the solution without giving up control over the direction and nature of the change is called:

cooptation

Consumers who only want to purchase products made in their own country are an example of:

cultural particularism.

Commercial software packages often include ________ features that allow the software to be modified to meet organizational requirements.

customization

The primary tool for representing a system's component processes and the flow of data between them is the:

data flow diagram

Multinational companies predominantly have ________ systems.

decentralized

Counterimplementation is best defined as

deliberate attempts to thwart the implementation of a system.

A business case does all of the following except:

detail the specific hardware and software needed to implement the investment.

In terms of global business strategy and structure, a multinational company will use a policy of:

dispersed production and marketing, with centralized accounting and strategic management.

In decentralized systems:

each foreign unit designs its own unique solutions and systems.

All of the following are indications of a failed information systems project except:

employees require training to properly use the system

An information systems plan focuses solely on the technology needed to implement the proposed new information system.

false

The network systems structure is the most visible in ________ services.

financial

Project management software typically has all of the following capabilities except:

identifying and quantifying project risk.

Transnational centers of excellence do all of the following except

implement the system throughout the world.

________ provide(s) a detailed statement of the information needs that a new system must satisfy; identifies who needs what information, and when, where, and how the information is needed.

information requirements

Most large companies with overseas operations have:

inherited patchwork international systems from the distant past.

An upscale restaurant supply business is implementing an information system that will enable it to add same-day home delivery of groceries to consumers. This is an example of:

paradigm shift.

In object-oriented development:

processing logic resides within objects.

Acceptance testing:

provides the final certification that the system is ready to be used in a production setting.

In the direct cutover conversion strategy, the new system:

replaces the old one on an appointed day.

In sociotechnical design:

separate sets of technical and social design solutions are developed and compared.

Systems design:

shows how the new system will fulfill the information requirements.

An information systems plan contains a statement of corporate goals and specifies how information technology will support the attainment of those goals.

true

The differing background between users and information systems specialists is referred to as the:

user-designer communications gap.

While users are concerned about an information system delivering the information needed for work, designers might be concerned about:

what demands the system will place on the company servers.