Review Questions for 15.566 Exam

I have drafted the following review questions to help you study for the final exam. The actual exam is likely to have a few definitions, some short answer questions and one or two mini-cases to analyze. If you can answer the questions below, you should do fine on the exam. I've scheduled an optional review session on Friday, 5/9 at 4pm in room E51-151 and you can also schedule individual appointments with me or Joyce by sending us email.

0. A Few Hardware and Software fundamentals

As mentioned at the beginning of the semester, the optional books and Friday session are provided as good sources for this material for those students not already familiar with these basic concepts. Please come to the review session on this Friday if you'd like me to help you review them.

(a) Identify the main function of the following:

- CPU

- memory

- storage devices

- I/O devices

(b) What is an operating system? An application program? Give an example of each.

(c) What is machine code? What is compiler?

(d) What is the Systems Development Lifecycle?

1. Introduction

(a) What is Moore's Law? What are its implications?

(b) What are some key characteristics of Digital information?

(c) What are the basic trends in hardware prices and performance? What implications does this have for the design of information systems?

(d) What accounts for the fact that many firms haven't realized the full potential of information technology?

(e) What lessons can be learned from the diffusion of electricity in factories in the last century?

2. Dyer/Brown

(a) What are three important lessons learned from the introduction of CAD at Dyer/Brown?

(b) How were business strategy and organizational structure affected by the introduction of CAD systems at Dyer/Brown?

(c) Dyer/Brown received major benefits from being an early adopter of CAD in the end. What were some of these benefits?

3. Virtual Factories

(a) What is the basic business proposition of Aerotech?

(b) What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of this mode of organizing? What concerns would you have if you were McDonnell Douglas? A supplier?

(c) How does the virtual factory differ from traditional EDI, value added networks, and groupware?

(d) Compare the virtual factory with large and sophisticated internet site? How are they the similar? How are they different? Will the widespread adoption of the internet technologies put Aerotech out of business?

4. Telecom and the Internet

(a) What is the difference between analog and digital coding? What is a bit? What is a byte? What is a Megabyte? What are the advantages of digital coding? What are the disavantages?

(e) What is the internet?

(f) What is the Worldwide web?

(g) What is a LAN? what is a WAN?

(h) Identify the following network switch types:

- packet switches

- circuit switches

Which approach uses transmission media more efficiently? Which approach requires more computer processor power?

(j) What is Metcalfe's law? What are it's implications?

(k) What is data compression? Give an example of where it might be used?

(l) Define the following: URL, HTML, WWW, FTP

(m) Why did the invention of the protocols underlieing the WWW have such a big impact on the growth of internet use?

(o) What are some examples of symetric and asymetric internet connection options. Why do many people believe that asymetric connection technologies are poised for explosive growth?

(q) What are some of the new capabilities needed before the internet can bridge the gap from being mainly a tool for communication and information exchange, to being a robust tool for electronic commerce?

(r) Why has the emergence of the internet made so many companies vulnerable to security lapses? What are three different kinds of lapses?

(s) What is the basic purpose and function of a firewall?

(t) What is difference between single key (aka secret key) and public key data encryption (eg., PGP). What are some important advantages of public key systems?

5. CAD/CAM/Intelligent Systems

CAD/CAM

(a) Why is the company the makes Pro-Engineer called "Parametric" Technology Corp.?

(b) What are some of the main capabilities of Pro-Engineer?

(c) What are some of the advantages of using this type of CAD system?

(d) List up to five ways modern integrated CAD systems differ from a pen & paper in its capabilities and uses.

Knowledge Based Systems

(a) What are the basic components of an knowledge-based system?

(b) What is the role of the inference engine vs. the knowledge base?

(c) Do expert systems learn? What is the source of their proficiency?

(d) Give an example of a "rule" in an expert systems knowledge base. How many rules might a typical expert system have?

(e) What is an A-V pair?

(f) What are three uses for Knowledge based systems?

(g) What are some typical applications of expert systems?

6. Mrs. Fields Cookies

Not responsible for this material due to class cancellation

7. Monitoring & Privacy

(a) What are some examples of how IT has increased the opportunity to closely monitor and control a work force?

(b) Ethical issues asides, what are some of the advantages & disadvantages of detailed monitoring in organizations?

(c) Under what circumstances is detailed monitoring (e.g., of the style employed at Cypress) more justifiable from an ethical stand point? From the standpoint of it being "good business"?

(d) Given you've decided to use IT to implement a fairly detailed performance monitoring and measurement system, what are 3-4 rules of thumb for more effective monitoring?

(e) What ethical issues are raised by invasive monitoring? Does consent of the monitored change things? Why or why not?

8. Reengineering and Beyond

(a) Why did reengineering arise as such a hot topic in the late 1980's? Why are reengineering and IT so often linked?

(b) What are the distinguishing features of "genuine" reengineering, versus other kinds of improvement programs?

(c) What are some of Hammer's basic guidelines for reengineering?

(d) Reengineering has gotten a bad name in many quarters. What are some reasons why? Does this mean the concept is of little value?

(e) What are the main architectural elements and roles of the process centered organization? What are the potential strengths and weaknesses of this organizational form?

9. Implementing Groupware

(a) What is Notes? What is an Intranet?

(b) Some organization have subtantial Notes-based, Intranet-based and traditional transaction processing style IT systems (such as SAP) How do these technologies differ? Why would the same organization need all three?

(c) What are the main elements of the Improvisational model to technology implementation? What key assumption does this model make?

10. Implementing innovation and managing change

(a) Why is an explicit process model needed to guide implementation? Isn't it enough to just plan out when and how various hardware and software functionalities will be "switched" on?

(b) Why is implementation so difficult? What are some classes of barriers to successful implementation?

(c) What are the key assumptions of the organizational learning process model for change? Under what circumstances is this model most likely to be of value to an implementation team?

(d) What is the "Murphy Curve", and what are some of its implications for managing technology implementation?

(e) What are some rules of thumb for effectively managing the burden on organizational learning during implementation?

(f) What are the key assumptions of the Matrix of Change (MoC) process model for change? Under what circumstances is this model most likely to be of value to an implementation team?

(g) How does the MoC work? What are the main steps in applying this approach?

(h) What are "complementarities"? Provide an example. How do complementarities affect the optimization decision of separate functional areas in an organization?

(i) Sketch a "Matrix of Change" diagram for Dyer/Brown. What insights can it provide?

(j) How can the MoC help you decide the difficulty of the implementation, where to start the implemenation, the pace of change, and whether to start at a greenfield or brown field site?

11/12. Outsourcing

(a) What are some of the benefits and risks of outsourcing?

(b) What were the main issues in the outsourcing negotiation between GD and CSC?

(c) What are the key elements that should be part of almotst any outsourcing contract?

(d) What were the factors that made the GD/CSC deal a success, at least so far? What are some the risks for the future?

(e) Why do you think IS outsourcing has become more popular in the past 5-7 years?

(f) Would it be a proper interpretation of Quinn and Hilmer to say: "let's keep our core competencies in house, and outsource every thing else?"

(g) Outsourcing is evolving away from "mega deals". What are some current trends in outsourcing?

13. Application Templates and SAP

(a) What is an application template? What are its advantages & disadvantages compared to packages and custom systems development?

(b) What are the potential advantages of SAP versus a set of "best of breed" functional systems? What are the disadvantages?

(c) Two distinct levels of system integration are available in SAP. What are they?

(d) What problems have companies encountered with implementing SAP? How has SAP reacted to these problems?

14. Evaluating IT investments

(a) What is enhanced DCF and how is it used?

(b) What is a benefits matrix and how is it used?

(c) What is a decision tree and how is it used?

(d) What is real options pricing and how is it used?

(e) What are the implications of real options for valuing investments and implementation planning?

(f) What are the most common mistakes people make when evaluation IT investments?

(g) What is the trap of the vanishing status quo?

15. Business Transformation and Primis

(a) What is the basic IT architecture of the Primis system? The DocuTech system?

(b) If successful, how would you expect Primis affect the roles of authors? Professors? Editors? Publishers? Do you think Primis succeed with out major changes to these roles?

(c) What is McGraw-Hill's source of competitive advantage in the new value chain associated with Primis? What business are they in now?

(d) There are some key differences in how information is stored and the technology standards employed in Primis versus Xerox's DocuTech system. What are they? What are the implications of these differences regarding need and/or value of accumulating a large, central databases of content?

(e) Should it surprise us that the Primis architecture and vision for custom books was developed by a book publisher, while the DocuTech architecture and vision was developed by a copier company? Why or why not?

(f) How do you think Primis, Docutech, CD/ROM and WWW stack up as potential successors to the traditional textbook?

(g) What are Venkatraman's five levels of IT-enabled business transformation?

(h) Should business scope redefinition be the ultimate goal of all IT projects? Why or why not?

16. Supply Chain Management

Not responsible for this material for the final exam.

17. Agile Mfg and Value Added Partnerships

(a) What is a value-added partnership (VAP)? What are some of it's benefits? What are some potential problems?

(b) Why has the VAP only become prevalent in the last two decades?

(c) What are some examples of information technologies that have made VAP's a more attractive/and or feasible option?

18. Integrating Heterogeneous Data

Not responsible for this material for the final exam.