Week Twelve - Project Management

Weekly Questions - Project Management




1.Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The triple constraint is important in project management as all projects are limited by these three interdependent constraints. A project manager must make intelligent trade-offs between time, cost and scope.

The triple constraint is the framework for evaluating the competing demands of cost, time and scope. The relationship between these variables means that if one of the three factors changes, at least one other factor is likely to be affected. For example, increasing the scope of a project may result in an increase in time and/or cost. 

2.Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical network model that depicts a project's tasks and the relationships between those tasks. PERT charts frequently display a project's critical path; the critical path is a path from the start to the finish that passes through all the tasks that are critical to completing the project in the shortest amount of time.

Gantt chart is a simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar, with tasks listed vertically and the project's time frame listed horizontally.

3.Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success

To ensure success a project manager much focus on three primary areas, which are: 

• communications
• managing people
• change 

4.Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed
Two reasons why projects fail:

• Poor planning: a failure to properly plan can be detrimental to the success of a project. Good planning uses tools such as a project plan, Gnatt charts and PERT charts.
• Scope creep: the project grows beyond its intended size resulting in time delays and increased costs.

Two reasons why projects succeed:

• Change management: A project managers ability to anticipate and react appropriately to change will better position a project for success.
• Communication: good communication is essential for the success of a project. A project manager should distribute timely, accurate and meaningful information regarding project objectives that involve time, cost and scope and quality, and the status of each.

Week Eleven - Weekly Questions

Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

1.What is your understanding of CRM?


Customer Relationship Management involves the managing of all aspects of customer interactions with an organisation with the intention of increasing good customers and increasing profitability-it costs less to retain loyal customers than find new ones. CRM has become an integral component of modern business.

2.Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers.Analytical CRM on the other hand, supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers.

3.Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

The Customer Relationship Management technologies used by marketing departments are campaign management and opportunity management. Campaign and opportunity management includes information such as costs, target audience and return on investment.

The CRM technologies used by sales departments essentially allows for the streamlining of the sales process. CRM technologies in this department are used to coordinate the sales process, by helping salespeople organise their jobs, calendars, contacts, appointments, meetings and multimedia presentations. 

4.How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

A sales department can use CRM technologies for a number of things which include:

• List generators, e.g. to find information a particular customers in a particular demographic.
• Campaign management.
• To know when and what to up-sell and cross-sell.

5.Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business intelligence refers to technologies that provide access to data for strategic decision making. It is a long-term tool that supports decision making. It is valuable to a business as it allows managers to find patterns and trends, and better respond to change in the dynamic business environment. 

6.Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem.

The problem with business intelligence is that although businesses are data rich, their information is poor. The solution to this business problem is the use of business intelligence because it allows for better decision making to take place and also reduces latency. 

7.What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

The benefits a business could get from data mining are:

• Better use of resources.
• More sales through being able to better market products based on the intelligence gained by data mining.

Resources

Baltzan P, Phillips A, Lynch K, Blakey P 2010, Business Driven Information Systems. 1st ed. Australia: The McGraw-Hill Companies

IT Dictionary 2008, Available: http://www.itdictionary.org/,  Assessed : Aug 11 - Sep 29 2011 

Week Two Questions

1. Explain information technology’s role in business?

Information technology is everywhere in business. Understanding information technology provides great insight to anyone learning about business. It not only has an effect on business but also the potential to transform it. IT has a positive impact by reducing costs, improving productivity and regenerating growth. 

2. What are Efficiency and Effectiveness Metrics? Provide some examples of each.

• Efficiency IT Metrics - measure the performance of the IT system itself, ex, through put, speed and availability. 
• Effectiveness IT Metrics - measures the impact IT has on business processes and activities, including customer satisfaction, conversion rates and sell through increases. 

3. What does Porter’s Five Forces Model attempt to explain? How does the internet affect the model?

Michael Porters Five Forces Model is a useful tools to aid in understanding competition and its implications for business strategy. It also helps to determine the relative attractiveness of an industry. It includes the buying power, supplier power, threat of substitute products or services, threat of new entrant which becomes the rivalry among existing competitors. 

4. Describe the relationship between business processes and value chains?

A business process is a standardised set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer's order. To evaluate the effectiveness of its business processes. The value chain approach views an organisation as a series of processes, each of which adds value to the product service for each customer. To evaluate the effectiveness of its business processes, an organisation can use Porter's value chain approach. An organisation creates value by performing a series of activities that Porter identifies as the value chain. 

Operations Management and Supply Chain

Week Nine Weekly Questions


1. Define the term operations management (OM).


It is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources into goods and services.



2. Explain operations management’s role in business


 Operations management is responsible for managing the core process used to manufacture goods and produce services. 




3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology


Managers can use IT to heavily influence operations management decisions including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One of the greatest benefits of IT on OM is in making operational decisions because it heavily influences how the goals and objectives are set out. 




4. Explain supply chain management and its role in a business


A supply chain involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability. 



5. List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain


The five basic components of supply chain management are:

• Plan - this is the strategic portion of supply chain management. A company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services. 
• Source - companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services that are needed in making products. 
• Make - companies manufacture their products or services, can include scheduling the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging and preparing for delivery. 
• Deliver - also known as logistics, it is the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage supplies from suppliers to consumers. 
• Return - most commonly the most pragmatic step, companies must create network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products. 

6. Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.


Technology advances in the five supply chain management components have significantly improved companies forecasting and business operations. Businesses today have access to modelling and simulation tools, algorithms and applications that can combine information from multiple sources to build forecasts for days, weeks and months in advance. 

Weekly Questions



Week 7 Questions

1. List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information.

• Accuracy - are all the values correct? For example, is the spelling correct? are all financial recording correct? 
• Completeness - are any of the values missing? For example, are there full address details provided? 
• Consistency - is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information? For example,does the true total of the individual fields equal the total fields. 
• Uniqueness - Is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information? for example, are their duplicate numbers and customers?
• Timeliness - Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? ex, is the information updates every hour, day, week or month?

2. Define the relationship between a database and a database management system.

A database maintains information about different types of objects (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees) and places (warehouses). From this set of information, management use it to access data in the data base so the program can consult it to answer queries. The computer program used to manage and query a database in known as database management system. 






3. Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database.

Databases tend to mirror business structures, and a good database can handle changes quickly and easily, just as any good business needs to be handle changes in the most effective and efficient way. Databases also provide flexibility in allowing each user to access information in whatever way best suits their needs. 

4. Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.

The main concepts of the relational database model are entities, entity classes, attributes, keys and relationship. An entity in the relational database model is a person, place , thing, transaction or event about which information is stored. 

5. Describe the benefits of a data-driven website.

A data-driven website is an interactive website kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of a database. They are really useful when the site offers a great deal of information, products or services. 

Chapter Seven - Weekly Questions




1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.


Wireless fidelity is a means of linking computers using infrared or radio signals. It is extremely helpful for people on the move who would like to access to the internet. It is also moving quickly in the corporate and commercial world, especially in older buildings and confined spaces. It is extremely useful as it can enable people to continue to do their jobs while utilising more space that is available to them. 




2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP


The telecommunications industry is experiencing great benefits from combined VoIP with emerging standards that allow from easier development, interoperability among systems and application integration. The VoIP and open standards combination has produced more choices, lower prices and new applications. 




3. Compare LANs and WANs


A local area network (LAN) is designed to connect a group of computers in close proximity to each other such as in an office building, school or home. It is quite useful  for sharing resources like files, printers, games or other applications. A wider area network (WAN) spans a larger geographical area, such as, province or country. They both do very similar jobs, hoverer their connection limits are quite different, which is what differentiates them from each other.  




4. Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective.


Radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart labels that can store unique identifiers  and relay this information to electronic readers. Manufacturers improve supply chain planning and execution by incorporating RFID technologies. Retailers use RFID to control theft, increase efficiency in their supply chains and improve demand planning. 




5. What is one new emerging technologythat could change a specific industry?


Real time information is now the currency of business and the enabler of game chaining innovations in education, entertainment and media. These trends can include widespread use of mobile social networks, greater choice in multifunction/converged devices and more wireless home and entertainment options. Wireless has become the main player in revolutionising the industry as it is technology that can be customised to shape that certain products, service or businesses needs.