Management Information Systems - Assignment Example

Name: University: Instructor: Date: Management Information Systems Question One Basically, the process of deriving IT goals from the all-encompassing corporate goals is crucial for the development of the organisational strategy. More importantly, the connection between IT and corporate goals, according to Hanschke (23) has to be transparent; thus, allowing the organisation to verify whether the goals are in line with the corporate strategy. One of the factors that drive the business is the ability to differentiate the company from competition by means of cost leadership or individualisation. Undoubtedly, flexible, efficient and powerful IT solutions, as well as business information’s good provision, could make an enormous contribution to differentiation. The business should make sure that information is supplied effectively in order to achieve business intelligence that is meaningful. Being faster than competitors is another business driver since the business will be able to concentrate relentlessly on business innovation. This would lead to quicker product development. IT as a major business driver can enable a company to establish a time advantage through robust and flexible enterprise architectures, strategic planning as well as technical innovation can serve as service access points and sales channels, which are specifically modified to customer requirements. Business success can be achieved by assigning resources efficiently; that is to say, if IT enables the business processes to run effectively with automated or leaner workflows, the organisation is inclined to gain substantial efficiency in business workflows. As pointed out by Hanschke (165), the connections between the business landscape and application models, IT is connected to the business requirements and corporate goals which; thus, providing a platform for making decisions regarding the form that the IT landscape would pursue in the future. Managing the IT landscape in a strategic way generates an overview of the structures existing in the IT as well as the interactions between the business and IT. The IT landscape management promotes improves knowledge about the enterprise as a whole as well as how enterprise’s business success is driven forward by IT. It as well generates a common language between IT and business, creating connections between IT and business structures. The ensuing transparency allows for the satisfaction of the information need from different perspectives and generates a solid basis for making decisions. Besides that, automation can help drive efficiency in processes that are not subjected to frequent change. The business architecture highlights the key enterprise’s business structures which drive the activities of the enterprise. The business architecture’s main elements include business functions, business objects, business processes, as well as business units. The current business requirements can be strategic and operational, and it includes: Business process (such as production, planning, or sales) Business functions (Research and Development (R&D), procurement, and production) Organisational structures Customers feedback Round-the-clock service for sales staff Strategic focus (management, leadership, and planning) People (employees, training and development) Question two A business driver, according to Hanschke (320) is the business’s success factors and are related to the strategic goals. Business drivers can be described as the main resources and factors that offer the essential operational, sales and marketing functions of the enterprise. These resources and factors vary broadly depending on the market dynamics such as scope and industry. There are scores of best-practices that could direct the business towards the path of profit and success. More importantly, business success factors of could directly result in failures of the others. For instance, the success factors of a firm in information technologies industry will be different from that in software development. The business success depends on the company’s capability to differentiate itself from other firms offering similar products. This can be achieved through technical support, enhanced customer service, and delivering projects quicker. Therefore, a business driver can be defined as a measurable resource driving the performance in order to realise improved productivity. On the other hand, Business requirement is normally broken down into IT-related aspects and can be strategic and operational (Hanschke 321). Business requirement can generally be described as a stage in Software development life cycle that brings forth the end users requirements as the initial task to guide the designing of the future system. The product owners or business analysts normally capture business requirements before documenting them through various ways like a business case, project charter, or in a scope statement as well as project vision. More importantly, the business requirements could enable the project team, stakeholders and project owner to pursue same objectives.  The solution scope, which is normally defined through features, is also defined by business requirements. The features are prioritised according to implementation complexity as well as business value and they are used afterwards to define solutions requirements and elicit stakeholder requirements. Failure to define the solution scope in a proper manner can lead to scope creep as well as solutions which are inconsistent with the business needs. While selecting a tool for requirements management, it is imperative to choose a tool which supports all forms of requirements mentioned above. These business drivers and requirements should allow for the measurement of the level of goal attainment. The IT goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic as well as Time-bound. Question three The enterprise architecture makes an enormous contribution to the strategic evolution of the IT landscape. As observed by Peyret, approximately 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have enterprise architecture practices, and 64% per cent of companies with over 5,000 employees utilise the enterprise architecture tools. This growth, according to Peyret is attributed to numerous trends such as the globalisation of businesses in search for agility and local efficiency and the competitive strategic initiatives that need a common information source. The Enterprise Architecture (EA) tools gather the artefacts and models to define the IT landscape and enterprise. Besides that, the EA tools offer simulation and analysis capabilities; thus, enabling the enterprise architects in a significant way to collaborate and make effective and faster decisions regarding the evolution of the IT landscape. It is imperative to not that EA is not the same thing in all organisations because of the differences attributed to the adoption of EA in different organisations and partly as a result of differences in what the companies are prepared to risk. In addition, EA plays a crucial role in cutting costs; thus, making IT landscape better integrated, more effective, simple, and effectively managed. The EA could be broadened from its IT roots into a full partnership; therefore, providing the capabilities needed by understanding the business to develop, sustain or adapt to implement its business strategy. The EA main objective is to business processes, information assets, organisational structures, as well as application infrastructure as a way of institutional change and designing business. As mentioned by Porter and Millar (13) instead of controlling information technology, the IS manager must coordinate the enterprise applications’ standards and architecture all through the organisation and offer help in systems development. If most of the IT applications in the company are not compatible with one another, scores of benefits could be lost. According to (Rogers 13), technological innovation results in a form of uncertainty in the potential adopters’ minds and represents an opportunity for reduced uncertainty in other senses. Question Four Views, as well as viewpoints, are associated closely with the idea of communicating with stakeholders that normally have different needs with regard to understanding architectures and how they outline the things that interest them. Theoretically, there are an immeasurable number of views and viewpoints, but practically many groups of stakeholders would gain from a common set of viewpoints and views. Stakeholders normally perform numerous roles and therefore, the individual’s needs could be satisfied by many diverse views from diverse viewpoints. The view can be described as something seen from a viewpoint but it could have diverse representations that depend on what the stakeholders desire to see, which includes stylisations, fidelity, the level of detail, filtering, and so forth. For instance, the Development Manager and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) may desire to view the applications which offer a certain business capability in the present enterprise architecture, but one of them could want a diagram or simple list while the other could want same applications in a detailed diagram that shows payload information as well as interfaces. Numerous languages and techniques promote the Viewpoint Library idea that consists of a series of viewpoints that are commonly used and valuable. The EA has different tools to help with the development as well as management of representations, views and viewpoints. Some of the tools which could be utilised to create different views of the repository elements include the Model Views and Working Sets. Model Views could be utilised to create elements; views grouped together regardless of their Project Browser location. The Working sets facilitate the gathering of, Team Reviews, Matrixes and Diagrams that are saved as well as reopened as a set. This is valuable when different stakeholders are involved. Some of the stakeholders include top management, end-users, architect, developer, project manager and operational manager. The CFO and CIO are concerned with the high-level drivers of the organisation. The Project Portfolio Managers roles include funding, prioritising, and aligning change activity. HR managers are concerned with supporting the EA architecture as well as changes to it. Suppliers’ main role is to ensure that the requirements for information exchange are met. The role of technical specialist is specifying technology product designs, Works Cited Hanschke, Inge. Strategic IT Management: A Toolkit for Enterprise Architecture Management. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010. Peyret, Henry. The Forrester WaveTM: Enterprise Architecture Tools, Q2 2007. Enterprise Architecture Professionals. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Forrester Research, Inc, 2007. Porter, Michael E. and Victor E. Millar. “How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage.” Harvard Business Review 63 (1985): 149–160. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. 4th. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Read More