Qeiteri Armelle

The pace of change seems to increase relentlessly, especially changes involving information technology. Using your crystal ball, identify and discuss three changes likely to have substantial impact on your school services in the next three years. (1500 words)

Information technology changes rapidly as we all know. From time to time technology upgrades. We can’t even notice the fast changes of the technology nowadays. In response, many organizations create a formal group of IT professionals to evaluate emerging IT so they can better cope with its change. A survey based on structured interviews was mailed to a nationwide sample of 1,000 IT organizations. Two hundred forty-six respondents provided data to identify categories of coping mechanisms to handle changing IT. Five categories emerged: Education and Training, Internal Procedures, Vendor Support, Consultant Support, and Endurance. Organizations apply Education and Training more extensively than the others. Thus the research contributes to understanding the means by which organizations cope with rapid IT change. The research also found that organizations with a group dedicated to investigating emerging IT cope more extensively, but not more successfully, than do those without one. Thus the research contributes not only by providing an understanding of how organizations cope with rapid IT change, but also by suggesting the need to achieve more from the group charged with emerging IT. The pervasive influence of information technology (IT) in the computing age cannot be overstated. Since the 90s, IT has brought about a revolution at the workplace. The recent development and fast-paced adoption of Internet communication and Web-based technologies and applications has enhanced the potential of IT. IT and computer systems deployed strategically can impact the operational aspects and productivity parameters of a business. IT and attendant technologies and tools can be used to automate key business operations, functions and activities of a business. Businesses can invest in desktop computers, workstations, laptops, minicomputers, notebook computers and high-end servers for a host of organizational tasks and functions. Market-available software, computing applications, networking and other IT productivity tools installed in computers and computer systems can help professionals, workers and staff in a business to streamline work processes and execute tasks and functions faster in order to achieve organizational-defined goals and targets. Internet communication and telecommunication technologies and IT software systems can enable workers to work, interact and share information across locations and geographical boundaries. With the help of IT, businesses with multi location offices and manufacturing facilities in different geographical zones can help staff members and employees to collaborate and work simultaneously on projects. Use of proprietary collaborative software and workgroup support systems can foster greater collaboration, streamline workflow management and encourage proactive human interactions. Information Management Businesses generate vast reserves of data and information on a daily basis. Investing and deploying IT software systems such as enterprise resource planning solutions, management information system, data-processing data centers and related information management technologies can help businesses to manage, leverage and optimize terabytes of data. Information processing, classification and management is the key to operational efficiency and decision making for workers, professionals and top executives in an organization. Investment in large-scale IT systems, networks and technologies calls for budgeting and allocation of resources. Businesses need to account for long-term planning, evaluation and deployment of relevant strategic-fit IT solutions to address business growth, manpower needs and ambitious expansion plans. Used strategically, IT systems can boost employee productivity and impact the bottom line of businesses.


IT or Information Technology is clearly defined as the use of computers and software to manipulate information in different organizations of different field of interest. Information Technology is becoming a discipline out of the research and development activities in the fields of technology. Nowadays, change in Information Technology is very massive that it changes environment and organizations, and it goes to show that life is also constantly changing in any aspect. New technology is creating opportunities to produce more timely, accurate, and useful information. As time goes by, organizations are performing critical functions related to information technology to optimize the usefulness of Information Technology. Information Technology has helped develop more advanced community learning environment. School environment is one of those organizations which is very adaptive when it comes to technology changes, for most of the teachings of today’s education conformed with the teachings of the current technology; and so schools have this common objective that people in nearly every career are required to have some knowledge of computers and software since these are the components of information technology. A variety of learning institutions believe that Information technology helps organizations function more efficiently so they can improve. Information Technology is very important to learning communities like school, Information Technology resources are very vital in the learning of the students; it caters a vast of information which sometimes copes up to the limited resources which the school provides. Utilizing IT allows teachers to enhance the curriculum. Software programs are available to make lessons more appealing to students and help them grasp concepts. In addition, students use IT to research topics for papers and discuss their classes with other students locally or in other parts of the country. Information technology has opened up the world to students and if used properly in classrooms will enhance their learning experiences. Teachers must be committed to using IT in their classrooms for the sake of student learning. Attitudes toward technology use within the school setting are an important and often overlooked component of successful curriculum integration of technology. Much of the research done on technology integration assumes that once appropriate technological tools are in place in the classroom, students, teachers, and parents will overwhelmingly support the change toward a technologically based curriculum. Technology becomes a more prevalent part of the education culture with each passing year. Schools cannot ignore the impact of technology and the changing face of curriculum.


as what they said the only thing that is constant is changes.when we say pace..
it is the manner of moving or simply the manner of changing.

i can foresee our school in the next three years having these services
that has a substantial impact on our school:

Automated Systems for students advantages
**automated library system
this automated library system can be online or offline.
online== the students can do reservation online by just registering to have an account
and give the books information such as title, author, date of publication, and the section
where you can found this book.
you can also search the books in the university library online, just input onthe search engine,
this would also show if it was in the library or it was borrowed already.

offline== in borrowing books offline, the students will only swipe their library card in the
device, the students data will automatically inputed to the borrowing sheet in the library system.
and let the book's barcode will be able to read by the barcode reader so that it will automatically
be inputed to the borrowing sheet of the database. with this,the students and even the library personnel
have leessen their effort.since,this will also give the due date and calculate the penalties if ever
the book will return late.

**attendance tracker of faculties
with this, the students will able to know whether the faculty is on duty,in class or in office, or on leave

it is possible by just downloading the list of the faculties that is categorized by department
through your cellular phones.

it is advantage to the students who want to see their busy professor.

**event manager for all organizations
this will give you calendar of the events of all of the organization in the university.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
--"is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or
incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification
and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and
beyond the line of sight of the reader."


wireless fidelity (WI-Fi)
--"is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance that may be used with certified products that belong to a class of wireless local area network (WLAN) devices based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. Because of the close relationship with its underlying standard, the term Wi-Fi is often used as a synonym for IEEE 802.11 technology."
is wireless technology which enables connection between two or more devices wirelessly for data sharing purposes. It is wireless networking which is based on IEEE 802.11 standards. it is now being used by millions of people using various devices such as personal computers, laptops, pads', printers, camera, games, mp3 players etc, more and more gadgets are coming with built in feature of this amazing wireless technology.In the whole USEP, WI-Fi is very pertinent in order to facilitate convenient access to information, to eliminate the need for wires and cables in order to access data and media, to aid compatibility and connectivity between different systems in the network and most especially to eliminate the need for other paraphernalia like switchboards, adapters and plugs that clutter up the work station.




references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification

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fast forward ..., you were hired and have been tasked to develop a strategic information systems plan for a company. The company officers have extended an invitation for you to meet with them to discuss the direction of the company. Before this meeting, they have asked that you provide a list of questions with some explanation about the "why" of the question so they can be prepared, thus maximizing the output from this meeting.

Develop a list of questions you would ask the officers of the company and give an explanation and justification for each question. (1000 words)

Information has emerged as an agent of integration and the enabler of new competitiveness for
today’s enterprise in the global marketplace. However, has the paradigm of strategic planning
changed sufficiently to support the new role of information systems and technology? We reviewed
the literature for commonly used or representative information planning methodologies and found
that a new approach is needed. There are six methodologies reviewed in this paper. They all tend to
regard planning as a separate stage which does not connect structurally and directly to the
information systems development. An integration of planning with development and management
through enterprise information resources - which capture and characterize the enterprise - will
shorten the response cycle and even allow for economic evaluation of information system
investment.

For a long time relationship between information system functions and corporate strategy
was not of much interest to Top Management of firms. Information Systems were thought to be
synonymous with corporate data processing and treated as some back-room operation in support of
day-to-day mundane tasks (Rockart, 1979). In the 80’s and 90’s, however, there has been a
growing realization of the need to make information systems of strategic importance to an
organization. Consequently, strategic information systems planning (SISP) is a critical issue. In
many industry surveys, improved SISP is often mentioned as the most serious challenge facing IS
managers (Pavri and Ang, 1995, Beath and Orlikowski, 1994; Martin, 1993; Porter and Miller,
1985).
Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of
needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a
response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and
support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in
management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be
formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future,
priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application
area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know
where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be
adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability
architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities - is
the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need
for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture.
SISP is the analysis of a corporation’s information and processes using business information
models together with the evaluation of risk, current needs and requirements. The result is an action
plan showing the desired course of events necessary to align information use and needs with the
strategic direction of the company (Battaglia, 1991). The same article emphasizes the need to note
that SISP is a management function and not a technical one. This is consistent with the earlier
distinction between the older data processing views and the modern strategic importance view of
Information Systems. SISP thus is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing
new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its
information technology investment. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will
assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a
growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities
has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal).
Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:
1. "What do we do?"
2. "For whom do we do it?"
3. "How do we excel?"
In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organization is going over the next year or more -typically 3 to 5 years, although some extend their vision to 20 years.
In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan."
It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.


what are the vision, mission, goals and objectives of the company?
every organization has vision, mission, goals and objectives. since i will be doing a job for the company, the organization should orient me about their VMGO, it will help me a lot because i will be aware of why does company offer services for.

what does our vision in developing strategic information system plan?
before making a plan we should identify first why do we need strategic information system plan, and make a set of vision we would like to accomplish in the future implementation.

what are your information systems?
the company should present their information systems that is currently implemented, since i will be going to work it out for the company's services improvement.

do you have current information system plan?
if the company has a current information system plan, they should present it to me, so that i would know in what aspect do i need to improve and make changes.

what status does your company have now, in terms of information system planing?
the company can explain further in what status does your company is in, is it in functioning and effective or is it functioning yet not effective.

what are the assessments does your company needs?
elaborate the assessments that your company want so that i would know what should i do to fulfill those vision statement that we develop earlier.

can you handle the changes that may happen during the implementation?
as we implemented the said strategic information system plan, does the employees of the company that is involved in the implementation willing to adapt the changes that they might encounter? does the company willing to conduct orientation before the implementation of the strategic information system plan.

references:
http://www.blastasia.com/PDF_files_for_web/Formulating%20an%20ISSP.pdf
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf

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Google

“.. Its performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world ... For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance ... For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything (again) ... But Google is also a case study in savvy management -- a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail ... Here's a search for the growth secrets of one of the world's most exciting young companies -- a company from which every company can learn...”


Profile..

Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related
to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking,
and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same
technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View,
California. As of March 31, 2009, the company has 20,164 full-time employees. Google
was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford
University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on
September 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004,
raising US$1.67 billion, implying a value for the entire corporation of US$23
billion. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments,
acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee
relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google. The company has been
identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work, and as the most
powerful brand in the world (according to the Millward Brown Group). Google's mission
is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
" The unofficial company slogan, coined by former employee and Gmail's first engineer
Paul Buchheit, is "Don't be evil". Criticism of Google includes concerns regarding the
privacy of personal information, copyright, and censorship.

Competitiveness….

Google is particularly known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. In January 2007, it was cited by Fortune Magazine as the #1 (of 100) best company to work for. Google's corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including, "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit," and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google's website. Google's relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo.Google has been criticized for having salaries below industry standards. For example, some system administrators earn no more than $35,000 per year – considered to be quite low for the Bay Area job market. However, Google's stock performance following its IPO has enabled many early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. Google implemented other employee incentives in 2005, such as the Google Founders' Award, in addition to offering higher salaries to new employees. Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, and strong brand recognition have also attracted potential applicants.After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt, requested that their base salary be cut to $1.00. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because, "their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests." Prior to 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.[63]They have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. In a 2007 report of the United States' richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin and Larry Page were tied for #5 with a net worth of $18.5 billion each.

Competitors..

1.Yahoo! Inc.
2. Pvt1 (MSN) – Privately held
3. AOL, Inc.
4. Industry (Internet Information Provider)
5. Disney Online

Uniqueness…

Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.
Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the agile process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads come in. It’s beautiful.
It’s also unlikely any other company is going to be able to pull this off. Google hit on the formula for ads before anyone else. They now have such a commanding lead in that arena that to compete with them you need deep pockets of money of your own. That makes it difficult to launch a company and follow Google’s lead of avoiding external dependencies and having the near perfect product development process.
At this point, you might be screaming at me that I’m wrong, because Google does have external contracts, especially for serving up ads on other sites. But notice that Google’s contracts are different from most companies’ contracts. Google isn’t developing a product for these companies. All they are doing is giving them an existing product that Google has already completed and released. Development on that product might still be happening, but it happens within Google, not within the realms of the contract. Google is still free to develop how ever they want.
For almost everyone else, you’re going to have to create a product and then drive sales of that product or else sign a contract and then deliver a custom product to the customer. You’ll have external dependencies that will force an outside reality upon you that Google simply doesn’t have. You can argue that Google is dependent upon ads, but at this point Google has captured such a large share of that market and is steadily capturing more of it, that it really isn’t a dependency for Google. Sure, Google should probably diversify, just in case the ad market tanks, but at this point Google has so much money they can afford to take their time.
So now you see. It’s unlikely you or anyone else is going to emulate Google. Kiss that dream goodbye.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from Google. Copy the good things that Google does and adapt them to your business. What you shouldn’t do is force the practices of Google on your business simple because they are what Google does. Google is a product of a very specific evolution and your business will be the product of a different evolution.
And when your developers come to you and say that they want to be exactly like Google, you now have an argument to explain why your business can’t be exactly like Google.
Still, there’s nothing preventing you from being the next great company after Google. That prize is still there for the taking.


New services offer…

1. New Storage Service

Google Inc has announced its very own cloud-based online storage service which will allow Google Docs users to upload any type of file of up to 250 MB while they will have access to a total storage capacity of 1GB.
(14 January, 2010, by Desire Athow)

2. Google Nexus One

Yesterday Google wasn’t in the business of selling mobile phones. Today, they are. The Nexus One smartphone has arrived and on sale at Google.com/phone.
(January 5th 2010 by Michael Arrington)

3. Google Click-to-Call (Billing) in Ads on Mobile Devices

Google sent out notification to its AdWords advertisers that this month “your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”
(Jan 5, 2010 at 7:59am ET by Greg Sterling)

4. Google Goggles

A new service that promises to make searching the internet as easy as taking a photo. The application, which will premier on Android devices, will let a user snap a photo of anything and then Google will deliver search results based on that image.
(December 7th, 2009 by Stefan Constantinescu)

5. Free DNS Service

Google just released their newest service which is public DNS. DNS is one of the most important services when it comes to using the internet. The main reason to use the service is reliability, speed and increased security. Google has put in other measures to help with overall security.

http://searchengineland.com/google-to-introduce-click-to-call-billing-in-ads-on-mobile-devices-32831
http://www.programmersparadox.com/2008/03/17/googles-unique-advantage/
http://www.serverninjas.com/free-dns-service-offered-by-google
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=GOOG
http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/1/14/microsoft-teases-google-over-new-storage-service/

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You were invited by the university president to prepare an IS plan for the university, discuss what are the steps in order to expedite the implementation of the IS Plan.

What is Information System Plan?

Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of
needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a
response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and
support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in
management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be
formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future,
priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application
area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know
where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be
adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability
architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities - is
the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need
for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture.
SISP is the analysis of a corporation’s information and processes using business information
models together with the evaluation of risk, current needs and requirements. The result is an action
plan showing the desired course of events necessary to align information use and needs with the
strategic direction of the company (Battaglia, 1991). The same article emphasizes the need to note
that SISP is a management function and not a technical one. This is consistent with the earlier
distinction between the older data processing views and the modern strategic importance view of
Information Systems. SISP thus is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing
new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its
information technology investment. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will
assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a
growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities
has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.


Characteristics of a Quality ISP

A
quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is
useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.


Description
Timely

The
ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is
useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan
work than to perform the work planned.
Useable

The
ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for
each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be
parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
Maintainable

The
ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers,
business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick
changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to
the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished,
the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
Quality

While
the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first
try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the
individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new
hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working
staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into
the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living
document. It should be updated with every technology event, and
certainly no less often than quarterly.
Reproducible


The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities
are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially
be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.


Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed
against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.


Expedite IS plan implementation

Project management:
In this step, it refers to considerations such as where would the project/system suitable to be
implemented
or placed in, budget on executing and maintaining it, who are going to
manage it and are they suitable to handle implementation of the project?

Such
inquiries are supposed to be answered even before it was approved and
even before the project completion. The answers are going to make
implementation faster since all grounds are seemed to be covered
already like personnel to be hired, placement of system/project and its
needed support and back-up.

Time management:
refers to a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals. This set encompasses a wide scope of activities, and these include planning, allocating, setting goals, delegation, analysis of time spent, monitoring, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing.
Initially time management referred to just business or work activities,
but eventually the term broadened to include personal activities also.
A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools
and techniques.

Risk management:
can therefore be considered the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks
followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to
minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of
unfortunate events[1]
or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risks can come from
uncertainty in financial markets, project failures, legal liabilities,
credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters as well as
deliberate attacks from an adversary. Several risk management standards
have been developed including the Project Management Institute, the National Institute of Science and Technology, actuarial societies, and ISO standards.[2][3]
Methods, definitions and goals vary widely according to whether the
risk management method is in the context of project management,
security, engineering, industrial processes, financial portfolios,
actuarial assessments, or public health and safety.
The strategies to manage risk include transferring the risk to
another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the
risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular
risk.

Data Conversion:

In
this step, questions such as is there data needed to be put into
practical terms or layman terms than the technical terms the
development team used. Data or the information on how to use the
project should be stated in a clear and understandable manner, it must
be remembered that the user of the system might not understand the
professional jargon used.

Training of personnel:

User of the project are not IT professionals that is why time and training
has to done to guide them in how to use and manipulate the project. If
the person is knowledgeable or has received appropriate training then
implementation if IS plan will be done faster.


reference:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v3/informationsystemsplanning.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management

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Identify and discuss the steps for "critical success factors" approach?

Critical Success Factors

Identifying the things that really matter for success
So many important matters can compete for your attention in business that it's often difficult to see the "wood for the trees". What's more, it can be extremely difficult to get everyone in the team pulling in the same direction and focusing on the true essentials.

That's where Critical Success Factors (CSFs) can help. CSFs are the essential areas of activity that must be performed well if you are to achieve the mission, objectives or goals for your business or project.
By identifying your Critical Success Factors, you can create a common point of reference to help you direct and measure the success of your business or project.

As a common point of reference, CSFs help everyone in the team to know exactly what's most important. And this helps people perform their own work in the right context and so pull together towards the same overall aims.
The idea of CSFs was first presented by D. Ronald Daniel in the 1960s. It was then built on and popularized a decade later by John F. Rockart, of MIT's Sloan School of Management, and has since been used extensively to help businesses implement their strategies and projects.

Inevitably, the CSF concept has evolved, and you may have seen it implemented in different ways. This article provides a simple definition and approach based on Rockart's original ideas.
Rockart defined CSFs as:
"The limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organization. They are the few key areas where things must go right for the business to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, the organization's efforts for the period will be less than desired."
He also concluded that CSFs are "areas of activity that should receive constant and careful attention from management."
Critical Success Factors are strongly related to the mission and strategic goals of your business or project. Whereas the mission and goals focus on the aims and what is to be achieved, Critical Success Factors focus on the most important areas and get to the very heart of both what is to be achieved and how you will achieve it.

Typically, critical success factors can be categorized into five primary categories:

1. Leadership plays a key role in ensuring success in almost any initiative within an organization. Its impact is even more pronounced because this is a relatively new discipline. Nothing makes greater impact on an organization than when leaders model the behavior they are trying to promote among employees..when the CEO notices that a particular employee has not had been active within the system, he sends a message that reads: "Dear associate, you haven't been sharing knowledge. How can we help you? All the best, Bob."
Several other best-practice organizations have demonstrated this commitment to KM. At the World Bank, the president's support led to the creation of an infrastructure that promoted and supported the growth of communities of practice (CoPs) not only throughout the organization, but also around the globe.

2. Culture is the combination of shared history, expectations, unwritten rules, and social customs that compel behaviors. It is the set of underlying beliefs that, while rarely exactly articulated, are always there to influence the perception of actions and communications of all employees.
Cultural issues concerning KM initiatives usually arise due to the following factors:
• Lack of time - The goal is not to encourage the employees to work more, but to work more effectively. The processes, technologies, and roles designed during a KM initiative must save employees' time, not burden them with more work. This can only be accomplished if the employees' work patterns are accounted for during the initial design and planning phase of the initiative.
• Unconnected reward systems - Organizations have to maintain a balance between intrinsic and explicit rewards in order to encourage employee behavior. The most effective use of explicit rewards has been to encourage sharing at the onset of a KM initiative. If the attendees don't find value in either the meetings or the information on the system, providing incentives will not sustain their participation. People share because they want to, they like to see their expertise being used, and they like being respected by their peers.
• Lack of common perspectives - Sharing must be inspired by a common vision. The people affected by the new process or technology must all buy in to this vision and believe it will work.
• No formal communication - When designing and implementing KM initiatives, ensure that employees and customers know about the changes occurring in your organization. It has been hypothesized that a person needs to hear the same message at least three times before it registers in the brain. Hence, communication should be pervasive and ingeminating. While implementing KM within your organization, market yourself. Make sure everyone knows what you are attempting to do, and build anticipation for the launch.

If your organization naturally has a tendency to share knowledge, enabling knowledge sharing becomes a little easier. If your organization harbors a knowledge-hoarding culture, don't give in to it. Remove negative consequences to sharing. People want to share their knowledge. They want others to know they are knowledgeable. Break down some of the existing barriers to knowledge sharing, and give people the tools and environment they need. By designing KM initiatives around your culture, you will be initiating a cultural change.


3. Structure, Roles, and Responsibilities
Although there are many ways that organizations structure the governance of their KM initiatives, APQC has found common elements among best-practice partner organizations: a steering committee, a central KM support group, and stewards/owners throughout the organization who are responsible for KM. It is a combination of a centralized and decentralized approach.
The steering committee usually consists of executives at the top level. They promote the concept and provide guidance, direction, and support. The central KM group is typically made up of three to four people who provide the initial support for projects or initiatives, which are usually handed over to the business owners once they are implemented. The central group usually consists of people with advanced project management, facilitation, and communication skills. The stewards, or owners, are responsible for knowledge sharing and acquisition within the business units. Like the core KM group, the stewards are change agents for the organization. They model and teach employees the principles of knowledge sharing using a common vocabulary. All of these participants work as a team to prevent a silo mentality and incorporate resistant employees in the process.
Although the structure is put in place to establish ownership and accountability, if there is no overall ownership of knowledge and learning within the organization and the leadership does not "walk the talk," it will be difficult to sustain any sharing behavior.

4. Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure
Without a solid IT infrastructure, an organization cannot enable its employees to share information on a large scale. Yet the trap that most organizations fall into is not a lack of IT, but rather too much focus on IT. A KM initiative is not a software application; having a platform to share information and to communicate is only part of a KM initiative. Following are some KM success factors related to IT.
• Approach - The people who are charged with implementing KM must take the time to understand their users' needs. Matching the KM system with the KM objectives is essential.
• Content - With a similar focus on users' needs, establishing great content involves having processes in place to acquire, manage, validate, and deliver relevant information, when and where it is needed.
• Common platforms - A standard companywide architecture ensures the sustainability and scalability of KM efforts. By understanding the organization's infrastructure at a high level, the steering committee can guide the KM team in picking the appropriate technology. Sometimes organizations realize that they need a complete overhaul of their IT infrastructure before they can expect their employees to share knowledge. Many organizations have eliminated or are in the process of phasing out customized legacy systems and replacing them with market-standard operating systems. This enables organizations to build on the existing architecture by using off-the-shelf software that was written to support these platforms, thus avoiding costly customized packages.
• Simple technology - If it takes more than three clicks to find knowledge on your system, users will get frustrated. Of course, you have to temper that with the amount of information being delivered and the complexity of information demanded by the user. Another common mistake made in information delivery is the emphasis on explicit knowledge. Although technology is primarily used to deliver explicit knowledge, placing too much emphasis on it causes the user to lose the context in which the information was shared and leads to misunderstanding on how to interpret the knowledge.
• Adequate training - KM is enabled by adequate technology and people who know how to use it. Best-practice examples reveal that the central KM group should spend most of its time (after deployment) teaching, guiding, and coaching users how to use the system to interact, communicate, and share information and knowledge with one another.

5. Measurement
Most people fear measurement because they see it as synonymous with ROI, and they are not sure how to link KM efforts to ROI. Although the ultimate goal of measuring the effectiveness of a KM initiative is to determine some type of ROI, there are many intervening variables that also affect the outcomes.
Because many variables may affect an outcome, it is important to correlate KM activities with business outcomes, while not claiming a pure cause-and-effect relationship. Increased sales may be a result not only of the sales representatives having more information, but also of the market turning, a competitor closing down, or prices dropping 10 percent. Due to the inability to completely isolate knowledge-sharing results, tracking the correlations over time is important.

References:
http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/Critical_Success_Factors_of_KM.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_success_factor

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In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts?

organizational change...
in the business industry most asked questions but least answered is " what can we
do to make our business survive grow?"
some organization said organizational change.

when we say organizational change it implies changes of the
organization's strategic plan, or simply changing the nature of their operation and etc.
organizational change nowadays is just ordinary instances, just like people, who
successfully evolves through life cycles.
for an organization to develop, they usually undergo changes.

managers and leaders exert effort to make changes happen successfully.
to make these possible there are levels to which organization can decide
where to start.

first is, shaping and anticipating future or thinking what is good for the organization,
or simply foresee a scenario of the future and make missions and measurement system
based on the possible futures.
second, defining what is business in their core competencies. after defining mission,
make SWOT analysis or simply identify
the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
third, reengineering process
it focuses in making structural changes accompanied with the goal which is to
be more productive, efficient,and give quality or customer satisfaction.
fourth, incrementally improving business processes.
inthis level it focuses in making small changes in the existing work processes.

as we are tasked to identify which the most radical type of change occur now,
it is either automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering,
or paradigm shifts.

for me, i think it was business reengineering, since maybe when the technology
starts to evolves the organizations also make their operation be automated,
in automating their operation they also rationalized their
business process or the rationalization of procedures.

kulang pa....

references:
http://www.organizedchange.com/decide.htm
http://www.organizational-change-management.com/
http://wikipedia.org/

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What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?
in organizations, each of them has a plan specifically business plans, and others also have information system plan or the IS plan. Each plan plays a vital role for the organization to be competitive. in our assgnment2 in MIS2 we are tasked to distinguish the relationship of the two plans which is the business and IS plan. before that i would like to give the meaning of each of the plan.

In planning we should make a goal so that we can identify if our plan was successfully done. The plans were not only for the profitable organizations, but also for the non profitable organizations

Business plan (decision making tool)
Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal. . as what ive said the business plans are not only for profitable organization but also for non-profitable organizations. The profitable organization focuses on the how to attain income or the process of creation of wealth. The non-profitable organization like government agency, has also a plan that focuses on organizations mission, to the tax exemption of their services. Business plans may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.


Factors that need to be considered in making a business plan. First is the vision statement or stating what you want to achieve upon planning. Next is the people, do you have enough people or do you have people that are good enough that will play an important rule in implementing this plan. And of course the last is you should undergo an assessment, for you to know if the business plan you were implementing is effective to attain your visions.


Information System Plan (ISP)
An IS plan is a plan that focuses on the system that is used by an organization. That is either profitable or non-profitable organizations. IS plan are for systems that are currently implemented in an organization, these systems are either manual or automation. This plan was design so that the systems they were implementing are become more effective in the extent that it will help the organization to achieve or to attain their vision and goals.

Factors that need to be consider in making information system plan is that it should be flexible and continuously improving the performance of an organization. It should fit to the needs of the needs and requirements of the organization.

Own view…

These plans are somewhat similar because it envisions the company to more competitive in the industry. They were related because they really want nothing but for the good of the organization.






reference:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v3/informationsystemsplanning.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.myownbusiness.org/s2/

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