978-0073402987 Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Closing Material Part 1

Type

Solution Manual

Book Title

Business Driven Information Systems 5th Edition

ISBN 13

978-0073402987

April 4, 2019

CHAPTER NINE

CLOSING MATERIAL

OPENING CASE QUESTIONS

GETTING YOUR PROJECT ON TRACK

1. Knowledge: List the signs for assessing if a current project is

experiencing issues.

June is the perfect time of year to reflect on the current state of all the key

projects that were approved in January. At this stage, you and your

management team should have enough data to know if each initiative will

successfully meet its objectives. You may already know there are projects

2. Comprehension: Identify the options a project manager can

follow if a project is not meeting its success criteria.

To determine a course of action, ask yourself the following questions

about the project:

If part of or the entire project can be salvaged and delivered on time and

with the remaining budget, if the right leaders are present to steer the

project, if the new plan is solid, and if management will continue to

support the project, the following four steps will help you regain control

and deliver the revised project successfully. These steps are basic

3. Application: Illustrate the triple constraints role in a project.

The triple constraints include scope, resources, and time. These three

components are interdependent and if you change one the others must

4. Analysis: Analyze the four steps to recovering a project and

determine which one is the most critical.

The following are the four steps a project manager can review to

determine a project’s success or failure. Of course, each one is equally

5. Synthesis: Propose how you would develop a game plan to

recover a project.

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and

techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Projects are

short-term e orts such as removing old servers, developing a custom

ecommerce site, or merging databases. By continuously measuring and

Project constraints are speci.c factors that can limit cost estimating

options. They include: budget, delivery dates, available skilled

6. Evaluate: Argue for or against the following statement:

“Throwing good money after bad will not save a project.”

If all of the signs appear that a project is failing, it may be time to cut your

losses and cut the project—or at least radically restructure it. You know

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What role does project management play in the systems

development e9ort?

Any systems development e ort needs to be properly project managed.

2. What role does the project manager play in determining a

project’s success?

The success of a project completely depends on the ability of the project

3. Why would a project require an executive sponsor?

The person or group who provides the .nancial resources for the project is

4. Which phase in the systems development life cycle is the most

important?

All phases in the systems development life cycle are important. One of

5. If you had to skip a phase during the development of a system,

which phase would it be and why?

You should never skip any phases during the systems development life

6. Which phase in the systems development life cycle contains the

most risk? Be sure to explain your answer.

All phases have risk but where most projects fail is in analysis of the

7. Which project management methodology would you choose to

run your software development project?

8. If you started on a new software development project and the

project plan was using the waterfall methodology, would you

remain on the project? What could you do to better prepare your

project for success?

Any project using the waterfall approach is doomed for failure and you

9. Explain the different types of feasibility studies a project

manager can use to prioritize project importance.

The di erent feasibility studies include economic, operational, schedule,

10. Why should end users be involved in the systems development

e9ort?

End users should be heavily involved in every phase of the systems

development life cycle to ensure the project is complete to their

11. Why would a project manager use Gantt and PERT charts?

A PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical

network model that depicts a project’s tasks and the relationships

12. Why is gathering business requirements a challenge for most

projects?

Gathering business requirements is di<cult as most users do not

understand the entire business processes from end-to-end and gathering

13. What are the different types of outsourcing available for a

project?

Onshore outsourcing —engaging another company within the same

country for services. Nearshore outsourcing —contracting an outsourcing

14. What are the risks associated with outsourcing?

Length of contract, threat to competitive advantage, and loss of

15. Explain the goals of the Project Management Institute and

identify three key terms associated with PMBOK.

The Project Management Institute created the Project Management Body

CLOSING CASE ONE

Disaster at Denver International Airport

1. One of the problems with DIA’s baggage system was inadequate

testing. Why is testing important to a project’s success.

Without testing the risk or errors will surly destroy the project. Di erent

types of testing include:

2. Evaluate the different systems development methodologies.

Which one would have most signiEcantly increased the chances

of the project’s success?

Student answers to the type of implementation method that would have

improved the success of the system will vary. There are a number of

di erent software development methodologies including:

3. How could more time spent in the analysis and design phase have

saved Colorado taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars?

An error found during the analysis and design phase is relatively

inexpensive to .x. All that is typically required is a change to a Word

4. Why could BAE not take an existing IT infrastructure and simply

increase its scale and expect it to work?

Increasing the scale increases everything. It increases the stress on the

hardware, more users on the software, and greater information needs and

CLOSING CASE TWO

Reducing Ambiguity in Business Requirements

1. Why are ambiguous business requirements the leading cause of

system development failures?

The most common reason systems fail is because the business

requirements are either missing or incorrectly gathered during the

2. Why do the words “and” and “or” tend to lead to ambiguous

requirements?

And and or have well de.ned meanings and ought to be completely

unambiguous; yet they are often understood only informally and

3. Research the Web and determine other reasons for “bad”

business requirements.

Student answers to this question will vary.

4. What is wrong with the following business requirement: “The

system must support employee birthdays since every employee

always has a birthday every year.”

Every employee does not have a birthday every year. Some employees

could be born on leap year and therefore would not have a birthday every

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