1. How do information systems projects get started in organizations?
2. How are organizational information systems related to company strategy? How does strategy affect the information systems a company develops and uses?
3. What do you think Jim's next step would be?
4. What qualities might Jim possess that would make him a successful project manager?
5. How do you think Jim should respond to Ella's implied pressure about the importance of the project to her?
6. What strategies might Jim employ to deal with a very busy team member such as Carmen Sanchez?
1. Look over the scope statement (PE Figure 4-1). If you were an employee at Petrie's Electronics, would you want to work on this project? Why or why not?
7. If you were part of the management team at Petrie's Electronics, would you approve the project outlined in the scope statement in PE Figure 4-1? What changes, if any, need to be made to the document?
8. Identify a preliminary set of tangible and intangible costs you think would occur for this project and the system it describes. What intangible benefits do you anticipate for the system?
9. What do you think are the sources of the information Jim and his team collected? How do you think they collected all of that information?
10. If you were looking for alternative approaches for Petrie's customer loyalty program, where would you look for information? Where would you start? How would you know when you were done?
11. Why shouldn't Petrie's staff build their own unique system in-house?
part-2
1. Are the DFDs in PE Figures 6-1 and 6-2 balanced? Show that they are, or are not. If they are not balanced, how can they be fixed?
2. Why is it important for the team to create DFDs if they are not going to write the actual system code themselves?
3. Again, review the DFDs you developed for the Petrie's Electronics case (or those given to you by your instructor). Use these DFDs to identify the attributes of each of the six entities listed in this case plus any additional entities identified in your answer to Question 1. Write an unambiguous definition for each attribute. Then, redraw PE Figure 7-1 by placing the six (and additional) entities in this case on the diagram along with their associated attributes
4. Using your answer to Question 2, designate which attribute or attributes form the identifier for each entity type. Explain why you chose each identifier
5. Using your answer to Question 3, draw the relationships between entity types needed by the system. Remember, a relationship is needed only if the system wants data about associated entity instances. Give a meaningful name to each relationship. Specify cardinalities for each relationship and explain how you decided on each minimum and maximum cardinality at each end of each relationship. State any assumptions you made if the Petrie's Electronics cases you have read so far and the answers to questions in these cases do not provide the evidence to
6. Using the guidelines from this chapter and other sources, evaluate the usability of the page design depicted in PE Figure 8-1.
7. Chapter 8 encourages the design of a help system early in the design of the human interface. How would you incorporate help into the interface as shown in PE Figure 8-1?
8. Describe how cookie crumbs could be used in this system. Are cookie crumbs a desirable navigation aid for this system? Why or why not?
9. The page design depicted in PE Figure 8-1 links to an Order History page. Sketch a similar layout for the Order History page, following guidelines from Chapter 8.
10. Describe how the use of template-based HTML might be leveraged in the design of the "No Customer Escapes" system
part-3
1. Why don't information systems projects work out as planned? What causes the differences between the plan and reality?
2. Why is it important to document change requests? What happens if a development team doesn't?
3. When a project is late, do you think that adding more people to do the work helps or not? Justify your answer.
4. What is the role of a pilot project in information systems analysis? Why do you think the Petrie's team decided to do a pilot project before rolling out the customer loyalty system for everyone?
5. Information systems development projects are said to fail if they are late, go over budget, or do not contain all of the functionality they were designed to have. Is the customer loyalty program a failure? Justify your answer. If not, how can failure be prevented? Is it important to avert failure? Why or why not?