Chapter 11 - Project Management

Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The triple constraint is related to project management which is an important task of any business. Sometime the triple constraint can be called the 'project management triangle'. The three attribute are; cost, quality (scope) and schedule. Every project must have a budget, and funds specifically allocated to its cause, this is in relation to cost. The quality of the project may include; quality of staff working on the project and the quality of the  performance. The scope projects what is expected of the project/ final result. The schedule; there must be certain time frames allocated towards different times in order to get the project completed.

For more information visit: http://www.enterprise-pm.com/pmbasics/triple-constraint

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

A PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) chart is a graphical model that depicts a projects tasks and the relationships between these tasks. It defines the dependency between project tasks before the tasks are scheduled. In the diagram boxes display various attributes for the project such as schedule and the arrows indicate the one task that is dependent on the start or completion of another task. The critical path is the path from the start to the finish of the project that passes through all the tasks that are critical to the completion of the project.

A Gantt chart is simple bar chart that depicts tasks against a calendar. In a Gantt chart the tasks are listed vertically against the schedule which is horizontal. This particular diagram is ideal for representing the schedule of a project.

Further understanding on a Gantt Chart 

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

Managing People: This is one of the hardest and most critical tasks a project manager undertakes. It involves the managing the people involved in completing the project and any conflicts that may arise during the duration of the project. Managing people is one of the more difficult factors in ensuring the smooth completion of the project. A project manger not only has to manage the stakeholders of the project, and the project but the development team as well. 

Managing Communications: Is the key to a successful project and it is often helpful if the project manager plans what and how to communicate as a formal part of the project management plan. A communication plan is where the manager distributes timely, accurate and meaningful information such as time, cost, quality and scope. Also involved with the communication is the need for the project manager to update stakeholders of the progress of the project and makes any requests of additional resources.
Managing Change: Changes can come in the form of a crisis, market shift or technological development. A successful project manager will learn how to adapt to and even predict changes over the course of the project. Change within the duration of the project is inevitable and with the challenges and complexities that organisations face in today’s rapidly changing environment, effective change management is a critical core competency. Change management is a set of techniques that aid in the evolution, composition and policy management of the design and implementation of a system.

Outline 2 reasons why project fails and two reasons why projects succeed.

Reasons why projects fail:

1. Poor Scope - this refers to the work that must be completed to deliver a product with the specified features and functions. A project scope statement includes constraints, assumptions and requirements. If the scope of the project is not adequately planned the final product won’t be achieved because either it won’t meet the requirements or the work will also affect the time and cost of the project. With a poor scope the designated work will take longer than initially estimated or even come in over budget. 
2. Lack of project management - this can lead to numerous issues such as unreasonable time, cost and scope, there is a need to seek a good balance on these competing demands throughout the project. Between 30-70% of projects fail because a project won’t be delivered upon schedule, come in over budget or don’t deliver the scope initially agreed upon. A good project manager must also manage the people involved, communication and the change over the course of the project. If a project manager cannot ensure that the people involved with the project are able to work together the project won’t align with the schedule and the work won’t be done to a satisfactory level.

Reasons why projects succeed

1. Good communication - a project will have the adequate support of all involved because they will be informed and understanding of the requirement for the project. If all involved are kept in adequate communicative bounds they will be able to contribute effectively whilst also feeling part of a team environment.
2. Good decision making structure -this involves initially choosing the correct people, cost, time and scope of the project. It can also mean making decisions regarding whether or not to outsource the project, these are vital in the success of the project. Good decision making can also be a factor when changes occur during the projects duration and a manager must make crucial decisions to ensure success.

Chapter 9 - Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

What is your understanding of CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is a business strategy used by a company in order to reduce costs and increase profits through solidifying customer relationship by customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention.

Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary.

One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact “channels” in a company over time without having to repeat the history of their interaction each time.

Consequently, many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call centre agents.

Analytical CRM analyses customer data for a variety of purposes including:

1. design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimise marketing effectiveness
2. design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention
3. analysis of customer behaviour to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)
4. management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
5. prediction of the probability of customer defection (churn).

Link: CRM

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

There are three types of CRM technologies used by marketing departments. They are:

1. List Generator: Complies customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns.
2. Campaign management systems: Guide users through marketing campaigns performing such tasks as campaign definition, planning, scheduling, segmentation and success analysis.
3. Cross-selling & Up-selling: Is selling additional products or services to a customer. Up-selling is increasing the value of the sale.

 Sales department also uses three CRM technologies. They are:

1. Sales management: Automate each phase of the sales process, helping individual sales representatives co-ordinate and organise all of their accounts.
2. Contact management: Maintains customer contact information and identifies prospective customers for future sales.
3. Opportunity management: Target sales opportunity by finding new customers or companies for future sales.

How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

Sales department uses operational CRM technologies, to help plan customer meetings, provide an analysis of sale cycle, maintaining organisational charts, determine potential customer and competitors.

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Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses.

Business intelligence (BI) refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to analyse data and information to support decision-making efforts. An example is if a company is looking to buy new machinery, they can take statistical data of previous revenue to project what may happen next year in order to make sure that their costs are covered. It is an extremely valuable resource. 

BI can also help calculate the best sales people of the company, the demographics of customers and which customers buy more than others.

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

Business Intelligence may not always be the most reliable form of calculating for the future, for example there could be the launch of a new competitive business which will effect the sales of your business, or a sudden turn in the economy could also effect revenue.

What are the two possible outcomes a company would get from using data mining?

Data mining is finding patterns in statistical data, this could show a business the downfalls and up's of certain activities e.g. like what time of he year a product is bought the most. This can allow for businesses to prepare for certain times of the year. Data mining can also allow a company to understand the frequency of products that are bought.

Chapter 8 - Operations Management

1. Define the term operations management.

Operations management (OM) 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's role in business ranges across the organisation and includes many interrelated activities such as, forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, managing inventory, assuring quality, motivating and training employees and locating facilities.

3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology.

Management can us Information Technology (IT) to heavily influence operations management decision including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality, and customer satisfaction. One of the greatest benefits of IT on OM is in making operational decisions because OM exerts considerable influence over the degree to which the goals and objectives of the organisation are realised.

• What: What resources will be needed and in what amounts?
• When: When should the work be scheduled?
• Where: Where will the work be performed?
• How: How will the work be done?
• Who: Who will perform the work?

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

Supply chain management (SCM) 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.

A supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly , in the procurement of a product or raw material. The five basic supply chain management components are:

• Plan: 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 required for making products.
• Make: The step where companies manufacture their products or services.
• Deliver: The step is commonly referred to as logistics. This is the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of suppliers from suppliers to customers.
• Return: The most problematic step. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products.

A typical supply chain could look like this:

http://www.biz-development.com/SupplyChain/6.20.1.supply-chain-management-overview.htm

Supplier > Manufacturer > Distributor > Retailer > Consumer

1. Supplier - Provides the resources, raw material to manufacturer.
2. Manufacturer - creates the product.
3. Distributor - Distributes the products to retailers or sellers. 
4. Retailer - Orders product from distributors to sell to customers.
5. Customer - Consumer who purchases the product.

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

IT's primary role in the supply chain is to create integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions with an organisation.It advances in the five typical supply chain components which significantly improve companies forecasting and business operations.

Chapter Six - Databases and Data Warehouses

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

5 characteristics of high quality information:

1. Accuracy: The database needs to have the correct information. Example is the first and last names are spelt correctly.
2. Completeness. In order to use the full capability of the database all necessary information is needed. An example of this is that the full address is complete, that is it includes street, city, state and postcode.
3. Consistency: Is the aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information? Example, do all total fields equal the true total of the individual fields?
4. Uniqueness: Is each transaction, entity and event represented only once in the information? for example, are there any duplicate customers?
5. Timeliness:  Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? For example, is information updated weekly, daily or hourly?

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

A database maintains information about various object (inventory), events (transactions), people (employees) and places (warehouses). While a Database Management System is the computer program used to manage and query a database. It is used to access information from a database. Without a database there is no database management systems.

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

From a business perspective, database offers many advantages, including:

• Increased flexibility: A good database can handle changes quickly and easily. Also a database provides flexibility in allowing each user to access information in whatever way best suits his or her needs.
• Increased scalability and performance: Scalability  refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands while performance measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction. It is only that of a database that can handle the volume of information and the number of users required.
• Reduced information redundancy: Redundancy is the duplication of information, or storing the same information in multiple places. Redundant information occurs because organisations frequently capture an store the information in multiple locations.
• Increased information integrity: Information integrity is a measure of the quality of information. Within a database environment, integrity constraints are rules that help ensure the quality of information.
• Increased information security: An organisation must protect the information from any unauthorised users or misuse.

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

Relational database model is a type of database that stores information in the form of logically related rows and columns. The fundamental concepts of relational database model are:

1. Entities and Attributes: An entity is a person, place, thing, transaction or event about which information is stored. Attributes also called fields or columns, are characteristics or properties of an entity class.
2. Keys and relationships: To manage and organise various entity classes within the relational database model, developers must identify keys and create a relationship between them. There are two types of keys  that exist, they are:

• Primary keys: A field (or group of fields) that uniquely identify a given entity in a table.
• Foreign keys: A primary key of one table that appears as an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship between the two tables.

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

A data base driven website is an interactive website kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of a database. The benefits of having a data driven website is:

• Development: Allows website owner to make changes any time with little or even without the need of any help.
• Content Management: A statics website requires a programmer to make updates.
• Future Expandability: Enables site to grow faster. Which is hardly possible with a static site.
• Minimising Human Error: Data driven website contains 'error-trapping' mechanism to ensure that required information is filtered out correctly and information can be entered correctly.
• Cutting Production and Update Costs: It can be updated and published by any competent data-entry or administrative person.  Changes and update takes a fraction of the time of a static site.
• More Efficient: System keeps track of templates so users don't have to. Changes made once, in one place can take care of propagating those changes to the appropriate pages and areas.
• Improved Stability: Any programmer who has to update a website from static templates must be very organised to keep track of all the sources files.

Chapter Seven - Networks & Wireless

1. Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.

Wireless technology has provided businesses with more benefits. These benefits include:

• Increased efficiency of wireless technology allows for communication of information to be transferred faster within the business and between its customers.
• The lack of cables needed around the office networks,
• Providing a more flexible and mobile use of the technology where employees don't have to be sitting at their desk to complete work.
• Finally it reduces cost as it is much cheaper to install and maintain wireless technology.

2. Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP.

Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP uses TCP/IP technology to transmit voice calls over internet technology. It enables phone calls, faxes, voice mail, email and Web conferences over digital networks e.g. Skype. The benefits of VoIP is that it lowers cost for organisations. It decreases having to complete complex tasks in order to use this service.

3. Compare LANs and WANs.

A LAN is a local area network it is designed to connect a group of computers in close proximity to each other such as in an office building, a school or home.  A LAN in turn often connects to other LAN's and to the internet or wide area networks (WAN).

A WAN is a wide area network that spans a large geographic area such as a state province or country. WAN's often connect multiple smaller networks, such as local area networks

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

RFID or Radio Frequency Indenfication technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart lables that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to electronic readers. RFID tags can cut costs by requiring fewer workers for scanning items, also provide more currency and accurate information to the supply chain

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

Mobile TV is one new emerging technology that could change the Television Entertainment Industry. Using broadband technology , digital TV can now be viewed on mobile phone with the quality of  a digital TV. This could decrease the amount of televisions being sold, also increase the amount of mobile phone sold. As well as increase the amount of paid television used by consumers.

Chapter Five - Enterprise Architectures

1. What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

Information architecture identifies where and how important information, such as customer records, is maintained and secured. Information infrastructure is the actual implementation that will provide for effective information systems, including hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment that, when combined, provides the underlying foundation to support the organisation's goals. Information architecture differs to information infrastructure because one is the plan while the other is the implementation of the plan. Without information architecture, information infrastructure can not occur.

2. Describe how and organisation can implement a solid information architecture.

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An organisation can implement a solid information architecture by having:

1. Backup and recovery system: Backing up of the system that in an event where the system has crashed or failed it can be recovered by these systems.
2. Disaster Recovery plans: A plan that outlines the process for recovering information in an natural catastrophic event.
3. Information Security: Through managing users accounts and keeping up-to-date with antivirus software and patches.

3. List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture.

The five requirement characteristics of a solid infrastructure architecture are:

4. Describe the business value in deploying a service oriented architecture.

A service oriented architecture is a business driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services. It ensures that an IT system can adapt quickly, easily and economically to support rapidly changing business needs.

5. What is an event?

 

An event is the eyes and ears of the business expressed in technology - Electronic message that detect threats and opportunities and alert those who can act on the information.

6. What is a service?

A service must appeal to a broad audience and need to be reusable if they are going to have an impact on productivity.

7. What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively?

The emerging technologies that companies can use to increase performance and utilise their infrastructure more effectively are Virtualisation and Grid Computing. Virtualisation is the framework for dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. Grid computing is an aggregation of geographically dispersed computing, storage and network services, better utilisation and easier access to data.