MBA/MIS: Management Information Systems Fall 2014 Phone: 946-2627 Office Hours: MWF 11-1, Th 9-10 Jerry Post E-mail: Jerry@JerryPost.com
204B Weber Web: http://JerryPost.com class: MW 3:30-6:00 Textbook: Management Information Systems/6e (Post/online)
Day Chapter Topic Hands-On
1 8/25 1,2 Introduction, Foundations L1, A1, C1
2 8/27 3,5 Networks, Security L2, A2, C2 Q1
3
4 9/3 4 Database L3, A3, C3
5 9/8 6,7 Transactions, ERP, E-Business L4, A4, C4 Q2
6 9/10 Project Case 1 L5
7 9/15 8 Teamwork L6, A5, C5 Q3
8 9/17 9 Decision Support L7, A6, C6 Q4
9 9/22 10, 11 Strategy and Entrepreneurship L8, A7, C7 Q5 10 9/24 12,13 Systems, MIS Organization L9, A8, C8 Q6
11 9/29 14 Society L10, A9, C9 Q7
12 10/1 Project Case 2
See the chapter outline in the textbook for more detail. Grading: Project Case 1 30%
Project Case 2 30% Quizzes (best 5) 20%
Class (Assignments/Labs/Class cases/participation) 20% Grading scale based on final points
90.0 <= x A 87.5 <= x < 90.0 A- 85.0 <= x < 87.5 B+ 80.0 <= x < 85.0 B 77.5 <= x < 80.0 B- 75.0 <= x < 77.5 C+ 70.0 <= x < 75.0 C 67.5 <= x < 70.0 C- 65.0 <= x < 67.5 D+ 60.0 <= x < 65.0 D 00.0 <= x < 60.0 F
Copies of student work may be retained to assess how the learning objectives of the course are being met.
Cheating: See Tiger Lore for details. Unless marked as a team assignment, all work must be by individual students. Quizzes or exams might allow open book materials and the use of computer tools. But, answers must be the student’s own work and cannot include copies of text from other students, the text book, or Web sites. Penalties will range from a zero on the problem, to zero on the exam, to removal from the program.
Course Learning Objectives
The overall goal of the course is to understand how information technology helps managers run a business. There is a secondary goal of improving personal computer skills,
particularly with Excel and database queries. In the School of Business, this course serves two primary purposes: to provide and review specific technology skills and to prepare managers for dealing with IT management issues.
Students will learn to
(1) Use Spreadsheets effectively.
(2) Formulate basic queries and PivotTables to retrieve data.
(3) Use teamwork tools such as Microsoft SharePoint and Google Docs. (4) Identify MIS tools that can be used to solve common business problems. (5) Recognize common management problems involving the MIS organization. See the textbook for more details and outlines.
(Initial plan, subject to revision.) Typical day 150 min:
Lab 30 Quiz/Questions 20 Break 10 Case 30 Break 10 Asgn 40 Total 140
Labs
1. Excel #0-#5, #15. Simple table with forecasting and chart. SumProduct example. 2. SharePoint (team). Share a Word document with embedded spreadsheet containing
scenarios. Excel #7.
3. Queries. MIS Book/Chapter 4 #38, 41, 42, 43, 45 4. PivotTable. (Excel #11)
5. Teamwork. http://awwapp.com, Google Docs 6. Teamwork. Multi-touch
7. Regression and Goal Seek. (Excel #12)
8. Teamwork. Choose an industry with each person picking one firm in the industry. Find revenue and net income/profit data for at least three years. Create a chart from the combined data for the companies. Use the data to summarize the level of
competition in the industry.
9. Project Management. Create a Gantt chart. Microsoft Project; http://ViewPath.com. 10.Software example. Create a Web page using HTML and a style sheet. Bonus point:
Add a graphics element using either Canvas or SVG. Assignments (in class and teamwork)
1. Use the Export Data option in Rolling Thunder Bicycles to examine sales. Create charts in Excel. Share the charts with your team members and provide a basic analysis and comments about sales.
2. (a) Estimate your total personal bandwidth usage per month. (b) Estimate the peak and monthly bandwidth needs of small company that sells 100 products on its Web site (with photos); to 1000 customers in 3 weeks in December.
3. Data queries:
a. Sales by Model Type for 2010. b. Sales by Employee for 2012.
c. Customer who bought most bikes between 2010 and 2014. d. Number of race bikes for each crank manufacturer.
4. Identify keywords for a Rolling Thunder Bicycles Google ad. Choose keywords, the price to pay, and a budget. At least one person will have to log into Google ads. 5. Teamwork: Multi-touch
6. Data mining. Cluster analysis for cars. Evaluate the results and provide labels for the clusters. Explain how the results could be used for marketing cars.
7. Market Basket Analysis. SQL Server Bakery case. Evaluate the results and determine what actions to take.
8. Use salary surveys and advertisements to find the cost of typical MIS workers in your region. If you start a company and need to hire 3 MIS employees, estimate the annual cost. If you need to hire someone to create custom software on a contract basis and you estimate it will take six months to create, what is the estimated cost of hiring someone?
9. What risks do companies take by allowing employees to store data on cloud providers such as Google? How can these risks be minimized?
Class cases: Approximately 15 minutes to answer the case within a team. And then 5 minutes to present your main conclusion.
1. You get a new job as an analyst at a consulting firm. You will be expected to travel about 40% of the time. Your boss says you can get a computer from the IT
department. You have some choices but nothing from Apple. All of the models are on a contract that was written a year ago with one vendor. Summarize the most
important hardware and software elements you need.
2. You just arrived back at the office after a working several days at a client’s site. Your boss call you in with IT staffers and demands to see your cell phone. The IT staffers are claiming that several employees were using their smart phones and tablets to work on company and client projects. A couple of people had Trojans on their devices that picked up passwords and enabled attackers to get into corporate data. No one knew about the problem until one of the IT departments at a client called managers and said they had tracked an attack source to one of your colleagues. No one is happy.
a. What actions do you take now?
b. What could be done now or could have been done earlier to reduce the chance of this problem happening?
3. Choose the IT tool that should be used as the foundation for each of the following situations and briefly explain your answer.
a. A real estate agent at a small, local firm has to edit house photos before posting them online.
b. A small yoga center needs to track expenses for annual taxes. The company has no fixed assets and pays basic rental fees, utilities, Web costs, and a handful of similar bills each month.
c. A local charity organization needs to track services offered to clients
including contact information, services provided, and notes by volunteers and employees regarding the services and clients.
d. A finance manager needs to predict cash flow needs every week and evaluate various investment alternatives. The options change each week and the manager wants the flexibility to evaluate investment and banking options from multiple sources.
e. A friend wants to open a local bar and restaurant with about 20 tables. 4. You are managing a small but growing engineering firm with about 200 employees
that needs a new accounting/ERP system. The system primarily needs to track employee time and expenses on projects so they can be billed to clients. It also has to handle common accounting tasks as well as payroll and basic HR issues such as scheduling vacations and insurance payments. The biggest initial question is whether the firm should buy a traditional ERP to run on its own hardware or go with a cloud-based system. List the benefits and weaknesses of both approaches and make an initial recommendation.
5. For each of the following business situations, identify the collaboration method you would use and briefly explain why.
a. A finance director wants to provide information to all of her employees to keep them up to date on company and accounting-rule changes.
b. A small company faces a new, large competitor and needs to find a new marketing strategy to compete.
c. An engineering department needs to create chemical data sheets, update them, and make them available to all workers who use the chemicals. Many of the workers know more about the chemicals than the manager.
d. A marketing consultant has several basic ideas for a new advertising campaign and 4-6 people in the company want to see the ideas and provide feedback.
e. A company has just received a large government contract to develop and manage a new environmental program. It will involve a couple hundred people and take an estimated two years. The company is hoping to win similar contracts in the future.
6. Identify which analytical tool should be used for each of the following situations and briefly explain what value is provided by that tool.
a. A franchise food investor wants to decide where to open a new store. b. A company has thousands of individual customers and information about
them such as demographics, but wants to reduce them into a smaller set of similar customers for marketing purposes.
c. A large company with thousands of products wants to offer “kits” for sale that include a collection of useful items for specific projects but needs to know which items to include in a kit.
d. A company with sales across the U.S. has considerable data on sales and customers including estimates for income, age, and similar variables. The company is thinking about increasing prices on several items but wants to predict how customers would respond to changes in price.
e. A toy manufacturer has detailed sales data for the past 10 years. In July, it needs to know much production to run for the end-of-the year holiday sales. It has some initial orders but also relies on current economic data and actual sales from the first three months.
7. The cell phone industry is currently highly competitive and dominated by a few large firms. Choose a phone manufacturer/designer and determine a strategy for the next one-to-two years.
8. As a team create a diagram that could be used to help build a computer system for the following situation. You can use data flow/process, object/database, or use case diagrams.
A local contractor who mows lawns and handles other yard and gardening tasks needs a system to handle all aspects of the service business. The company has a primary list of customers and jobs to handle basic weekly tasks. These customers are billed and payments have to be tracked. Sometimes customers need additional tasks (such as fertilizing), and the owner eventually wants a Web site to enable customers to request these special tasks ahead of time. The system needs to track the time workers spend on various jobs but it should also have the ability for workers to add comments and suggestions for future work (such as trimming bushes). Each work crew has a leader and the leader evaluates the workers at least once a month with a basic rating form that includes things like being on time, job speed and quality. 9. Briefly describe the job or career each person expects to have in 5 years. Can that job
be handled as contract work? Are there jobs that are unlikely to be turned into contract work within the next 20 years? From the business perspective, what are the benefits and drawbacks to using contract workers?
Day 1: Introduction, Foundations
Lab 1: Excel 0-5, 15 Class Case 1: Middle-level management Asgn 1: RT Sales/Charts
Day 2: Networks, Security
Lab 2: SharePoint Class Case 2: Security
Asgn 2: Cell-phone bandwidth usage Quiz 1: Ch. 1,2
Day 3: Labor Day Day 4: Database
Lab 3: Queries Class Case 3: IT Tools
Asgn 3: Queries
Day 5: Transactions, ERP, E-Business
Lab 4: PivotTable Class Case 4: ERP in-house or cloud Asgn 4: Google keywords for RT advertising
Quiz 2: Ch. 3, 5
Day 6: Project Case 1, Lab 5: Teamwork. Day 7: Teamwork
Lab 6: SP Multi-touch Class Case 5: Collaboration method Asgn 5: Google Docs and Microsoft Live comparison
Quiz 3: Ch. 6, 7 Day 8: Decision Support
Lab 7: Regression and Goal Seek Class Case 6: Data analysis Asgn 6: Cluster analysis for cars.
Quiz 4: Ch. 8
Day 9: Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Lab 8: Census data analysis Class Case 7: Strategy: Phone/tablet/PC Asgn 7: Market Basket Analysis/Bakery
Quiz 5: Ch. 9
Day 10: Systems, MIS Organization
Lab 9: Project management Class Case 8: Software design Asgn 8: Salary survey and costs
Quiz 6: Ch. 10, 11 Day 11: Society
Lab 10: HTML/JavaScript Class Case 9: Jobs/contract workers Asgn 9: cloud data risks
Quiz 7: Ch. 12, 13 Day 12: Project Case 2
Statements Required by Pacific: Honor Code
The Honor Code at the University of the Pacific calls upon each student to exhibit a high degree of maturity, responsibility, and personal integrity. Students are expected to:
• act honestly in all matters
• actively encourage academic integrity
• discourage any form of cheating or dishonesty by others
• inform the instructor and appropriate university administrator if she or he has a reasonable and good faith belief and substantial evidence that a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy has occurred.
Violations will be referred to and investigated by the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards. If a student is found responsible, it will be documented as part of her or his permanent academic record. A student may receive a range of penalties, including failure of an assignment, failure of the course, suspension, or dismissal from the University. The Academic Honesty Policy is located in Tiger Lore and online at http://www.pacific.edu/Campus-Life/Safety-and-Conduct/Student-Conduct/Tiger-Lore-Student-Handbook-.html
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
If you are a student with a disability who requires accommodations, please contact the Director of the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) for information on how to obtain an Accommodations Request Letter.
3-Step Accommodation Process
1. Student meets with the SSD Director and provides documentation and completes registration forms.
2. Student requests accommodation(s) each semester by completing the Request for Accommodations Form.
3. Student arranges to meet with his/her professors to discuss the accommodation(s) and to sign the Accommodation Request Letter
To ensure timeliness of services, it is preferable that you obtain the accommodation letter(s) from the Office of SSD (insert timeframe. Depending on course and session, expectation might be 1-2 weeks or 1-2 days). After the instructor receives the accommodation letter, please schedule a meeting with the instructor during office hours or some other mutually convenient time to arrange the
accommodation(s).
The Office of Services for Students with Disabilities is located in the McCaffrey Center, Rm. 137. Phone: 209-946-3221. Email: ssd@pacific.edu. Online: www.pacific.edu/disabilities
