COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND ARCHITECTURE NOTES
- 2. 2 Opening Case: Kmart • Issue: whether & how extending e-business capabilities would revive the company’s competitive position • The IT initiatives must be based on planning issues – Aligning information systems with business strategy – Deciding what projects to do, etc.
- 3. 3 The Process of Information System Planning
- 4. 4 What Is an Information Systems Plan? • Information systems planning should be an integral part of business planning – Business planning – the process of identifying the firm’s goals, objectives, and priorities + developing action plans for accomplishing them. – Information systems planning – the part of business planning concerned with developing the firm’s information systems resources
- 5. 5 Challenges in Business Planning • Foreseeing and assessing opportunities • Assuring consistency with organizational plans and objectives • Building systems • Maintaining information system performance • Collaborating with IT professionals
- 6. 6 Principles for IS Planning • Support the firm’s business strategy with appropriate technical architecture • Evaluate technology as a component of a larger system • Recognize life cycle costs, not just acquisition costs
- 7. 7 • Design information systems to be maintainable • Recognize the human side of technology use • Support and control the technical system
- 8. 8 Planning Role of the IS and User Departments • The IS department is responsible for producing the IS plan in conjunction with the user departments • Chief information officer (CIO) – Leads the IS function, and is responsible for making sure that the IS plan supports the firm's business plan
- 9. 9 • User roles in IS planning – roles: – Sponsors – senior managers who make sure resources are allocated for building and maintaining the system – Champions – individuals that recognize the importance of an IS, and exert effort to make sure that others share that recognition – IS steering committees – make sure that the IS reflects business priorities
- 10. 10 Allocating Resources Between New and Old ISs • Maintaining existing ISs and supporting users – User support projects – Enhancements – Bug fixes
- 11. 11 • New development, infrastructure, and other projects – Major new applications projects – IT infrastructure – Research projects • Pilot project
- 12. 12 Project Roles of IT Professionals • Project managers • Application programmers • System analysts • Programmer-analyst • Technical writers • Computer operators • Database administrators • System managers • System programmers • User support staff
- 13. 13 Strategic Alignment of Business and IT
- 14. 14 Figure 11.3
- 15. 15 Consistency With Business Priorities • Critical success factors (CSF) – the things that must go right for a business to succeed – Identify the firm’s primary mission and the objectives that determine satisfactory overall performance – Executives identify a relatively small number of CSFs
- 16. 16 Reengineering and Downsizing • Business process reengineering (BPR) – the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance – Difficult and risky • Downsizing – improve process efficiency by reducing the number of people involved in the process
- 17. 17 Enterprise-wide and Interorganizational Systems • Interorganizational systems – reflect the customer and supplier aspects of the integration issues addressed by ERP systems – Integration between ERP packages and supply chain management • Virtual organizations – major aspects of core processes are outsourced to companies that specialize in these areas
- 18. 18 Information System Architecture • The basic blueprint showing how the firm’s data processing systems, networks, and data are integrated • Must incorporate legacy systems – Old, and often obsolete systems that are still in use • Computing platform – The basic types of computers, operating system, and network
- 19. 19 Centralization vs. Decentralization • Location of hardware and data – Corporate headquarters – Regional processing centers – Site processing centers – Department processors – Work group processors – Individual workstations
- 20. 20 • Standards, ownership, and guidelines for action • Position of the IS staff
- 21. 21 Describing a Business-driven Infrastructure Figure 11.5
- 22. 22 Outsourcing • A long-standing practice in IS departments • Application service provider (ASP) – Operate a firm’s application on remote servers on a WAN – Advantage: the firm no longer needs to install and maintain the software – Disadvantage: the firm has less control over the application, and may have difficulty transferring to another ASP if needed
- 23. 23 International Issues • Technical incompatibilities • Social and political issues • Telecommunication issues – Transborder data flow • Economic issues
- 24. 24 Selecting Systems to Invest In
- 25. 25 Cost/Benefit Analysis • The process of evaluating proposed projects by comparing estimated benefits and costs • Key issues: – Tangible and intangible benefits – Tendency to understate costs – Timing of costs and benefits
- 26. 26 Risks • Desired benefits are not achieved • The project is late and/or over budget • The system’s technical performance is inadequate • User acceptance is low • Shifting priorities reduce the project’s importance, etc.
- 27. 27 Financial Comparisons • Some common criteria used for comparing and ranking projects: – Net present value (NPV) – Internal rate of return (IRR) – Payback
- 28. 28 Project Management Issues • Division of labor between the IS department and users • Keeping the project on schedule – Goals, deliverables, schedules – Challenges in information system projects
- 30. 30 Information Sources for Analyzing Systems • Interviews • Inputs, outputs, and documentation of existing systems • On-site observation • Questionnaires • Benchmarking