Assignment Select a company for which you have a working knowledg.docx
- 1. Assignment: Select a company for which you have a working knowledge including goals, mission, strategy, and culture. In addition to a working knowledge of the company, you must have access to people in both the IT functions and in the business who will be willing to allow you to interview them to Tell a story of how the information technology function supports the business. Remember from your case study analysis work that not all organizations employ information technology well. Many treat the function and the cost as an expense. Some treat it as an investment. Analyze the facts your discover to explain what information technology means for your chosen organization. Your analysis should be a concise view of what is the condition of IT at your organization. Make sure that the sections relate to each other as an integrated report. Note in each topic area, the direction the organization should be heading. See Brown, et al text glossary and text for abbreviations and mnemonics. Vendor and product names and versions are not necessary but very helpful. Required: 1. Company description Industry and company goals and objectives Company culture Market position and how this impacts the investment in IT 2. Work System Snapshots to illustrate your analysis. Use the concepts introduced in this course to discuss the technology components. Include business processes, products
- 2. and services, and customers. 3. Profile of individuals you interview Explain the function(s), role(s), and decision making authority of people you interview. 4. Analysis of IT The following lists are included to help you plan what you will investigate and address. Your organization may not have some of these technologies or may be discussing using them. The list is not intended to be exhaustive or prescriptive. You may have other Information Technology that is not mentioned here that is important to your industry or firm. Include a discussion on any Information Technology (IT) discovered that is important to your firm. IT Department and staff CIO title and reports to whom IT department title, number and allocation of staff (refer to an Org chart) Percent of the IT budget of the total budget Analysts resident and reporting to user departments? Are users project leaders at your organization? Outsource any functions e.g. help desk? Number of new hires last year and number of these who were entry level Average time IT staff stay or a turnover statistic Number of IT layoffs in last budget year and at what level Is there a Web team? What is the Web team called, and where does it report? Systems development life cycle Methodologies used to develop systems Percentage of purchased packages vs. in-house development Project team assignment-e.g. are users project leaders
- 3. Learn what you can about an ongoing or recently completed development effort, budget, schedule, who was on the team, project management software used, etc. Capability Maturity Model rating Offshore software development projects, vendors, onsite activity Hierarchy of information systems AI applications DSS applications MIS reports TPS Mobile Support of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Hardware Numbers and types of platforms-mainframe, minicomputer, workstations, PCs Critical input/output devices particular to your firm and industry-e.g. hand held scanners for UPS Cloud services Software Type of OS for each platform, critical applications (e.g. billing system for utilities) Programming languages used for legacy and new development Collaborative software Office automation software and policies Database management systems (DBMS) Name of DBMS used across platforms Critical application databases (e.g. customer information for Land's End) Database administrator on staff Telecommunications Number of LANs WANs, connecting where Internet service providers Intranet Extranet Use of wireless
- 4. EDI with suppliers e-Commerce activity with customers and suppliers and security employed to do so Videoconferencing Global transmission and issues with foreign countries and cultures Management perspective (SWOT Analysis) Strengths and weaknesses Threats and opportunities Issues and implication for the organization 5. Conclusions By synthesizing and interpreting all the information you gather, draw conclusions about the organization and explain the role of information technology related to the success of the business/organization. 6. References Make sure you cite all sources. This project is not intended to be a personal recollection. Rather, consult documentation, interview people, and search for news sources. Do not, however, violate the proprietary rules of your organization. If you do not have an organization for which you can perform this analysis, then contact your facilitator for an alternate assignment. Assignment: Select a company for which you have a working knowledge including goals, mission, strategy, and culture. In addition to a working knowledge of the company, you must have access to people in both the IT functions and in the business who will be willing to allow you to interview them to
- 5. Tell a story of how the information technology function supports the business. Remember from your case study analysis work that not all organizations employ information technology well. Many treat the function and the cost as an expense. Some treat it as a n investment. Analyze the facts your discover to explain what information technology means for your chosen organization. Your analysis should be a concise view of what is the condition of IT at your organization. Make sure that the sections relate to each other as an integrated report. Note in each topic area, the direction the organization should be heading. See Brown, et al text glossary and text for abbreviations and mnemonics. Vendor and product names and versions are not necessary but very helpful. R equired: 1. Company description Industry and company goals and objectives Company culture Market position and how this impacts the investment in IT
- 6. 2. Work System Snapshots to illustrate your analysis. Use the concepts introduced in this course to di scuss the technology components. Include business processes, products and services, and customers. 3. Profile of individuals you interview Assignment: Select a company for which you have a working knowledge including goals, mission, strategy, and culture. In addition to a working knowledge of the company, you must have access to people in both the IT functions and in the business who will be willing to allow you to interview them to Tell a story of how the information technology function supports the business. Remember from your case study analysis work that not all organizations employ information technology well. Many treat the function and the cost as an expense. Some treat it as an investment. Analyze the facts your discover to explain what information technology means for your chosen organization. Your analysis should be a concise view of what is the condition of IT at your organization. Make sure that the sections relate to each other as an integrated report. Note in each topic area, the direction the organization should be heading. See Brown, et al text glossary and text for abbreviations and mnemonics. Vendor and product names and versions are not necessary but very helpful.
- 7. Required: 1. Company description Industry and company goals and objectives Company culture Market position and how this impacts the investment in IT 2. Work System Snapshots to illustrate your analysis. Use the concepts introduced in this course to discuss the technology components. Include business processes, products and services, and customers. 3. Profile of individuals you interview ME209 Summer 2015 R. B. Tarn Homework #3 Create a flowchart for each of these two homework problems; hand drawn is sufficient, or you can use whichever drawing program you like. Use one workbook (save as file type *.xlsm) with a User Interface Worksheet (UIW) and VBA module for each of these two homework problems. Submit the flowcharts and workbook electronically via Moodle, and submit hardcopies of all work (flowcharts, worksheets and VBA code modules) at the
- 8. beginning of class on Wednesday, July 8, or at the ME Department office by 3:30 PM on Wednesday, July 8. Be sure your name is at the top of all pages. General programming expectations: Include logic in your code to protect it from errors caused by inappropriate or invalid user inputs, or other process cases that may cause runtime errors. For example, if division by zero can occur, test for that condition and write code to handle it gracefully. Message boxes are an appropriate means of alerting your user to inappropriate or invalid inputs to Sub procedures. Never use Input boxes in homework or project assignments. Hint for determining if a worksheet cell is blank (empty): If Cells(irow, icol) = "", then the cell is blank. Problem 1: Polar & Cartesian Coordinates Converter Polar coordinates are related to Cartesian Coordinates by the following equations. 2 2 1 cos( ) sin( ) tan ( ) y
- 9. x r y r r x y x Write a well-structured Sub procedure that reads inputs for x, y, r, and θ from worksheet cells B3, B4, B5, and B6, respectively. Input units of x, y, and r will be millimeters, and input units of θ will be in degrees. Name these input cells and create appropriate labels for them. Process the inputs according to this logic: 1. If the x and y inputs are both zero (or blank) AND the r and θ inputs are NOT both zero, then calculate x and y outputs corresponding with the given r and θ, and write their values to cells B3 and B4, respectively. 2. If the r and θ inputs are both zero (or blank) AND the x and y inputs are NOT both zero, then calculate the r and θ outputs corresponding with the given x and y, and write their values to cells B5 and B6, respectively. 3. For all other conditions, do nothing.
- 10. Add a Run Button to the worksheet and assign it to your Sub procedure. Test your Sub procedure with inputs x = 2.5mm and y = 7.1mm to compute r and θ. Then test your Sub with inputs r = 5.5mm and θ = 49° to compute x and y. Ensure that your code calculates θ correctly, even for the case when x=0. Problem 2: Statistics Write a well-structured Sub procedure to compute the average and standard deviation of data entered by the user in column A of the user interface worksheet, beginning in row 1. Your user may enter as many data values as he/she wants, so your code must determine how many data values are entered. The end of the data values list will be determined by the first blank cell in column A. Design your Sub to read the values into an array, and then compute the average and standard deviation of the data, using the values stored in the array. The formulas for the average and
- 11. standard deviation are: Average Standard Deviation 1 n i i y y n 2 2 1 1 ( ) 1 n in i
- 12. i i y y y n s n Calculated results display: Write the number of input data values, and the resulting average and standard deviation on the worksheet, in properly labeled and named cells.
- 13. If the user enters less than 2 data values, display a message in the cell for the standard deviation result, alerting the user that at least two data values are required to calculate a standard deviation. If any of the user’s data values is not numeric, use a Message Box to alert the user of this error, and informing the user which line the error was found on. In this event, the cells displaying the calculated results will be blank. Create a “Run” button to execute your Sub procedure, and test your Sub by entering at least 20 data values.