MTI

Managing IT in business today is very different from managing in a prebrowser world
Business managers now expect:
- Information on firm’s internal operations
- Data about external market conditions
- Automated personal organizers
- Networks always available
- Applications that are easy to use

Three ways to compete (Porter, 1980):
- Cost – by being a low-cost producer of a good or service
- Differentiation – by offering products or services customers prefer due to superiority with innovativeness, image, quality, or customer service
- Focus – competing on cost or differentiation within a specific market niche

IT can help with cost
Examples:
-Automating transaction time
-Shortening order cycle time
-Providing operational information for decision making
IT can help with differentiation
Examples:
-Giving sales personnel information to better serve customers
-Providing just-in-time supplies for customers
-Creating new information-based products

More Productive Teams
-E-mail
-Document sharing
-Software to support collaborative teamwork
-Videoconferencing

People Roles
-IS Leaders
-Other IS Managers
-IS Professionals
-Business Managers
-End Users

End Users …
-Provide business expertise to project teams
-Participate in redesign of business processes
-Give feedback to prototype screens and reports during system development
-Help gather customer input when they are directly affected by IT project

Third and Fourth Generation Languages
Machine language (1GL)
-Each instruction must be expressed in unique form for a particular computer
-Complete program consists of thousands of instructions
-Programming was tedious, time-consuming process
Assembly languages (2GL)
-Use computer itself to perform many aspects of the programming
-Create a machine language program as output, that is then used by the computer’s control unit
Procedural Languages (3GL)
-Generally are machine independent.
-Express a step-by-step procedure developed by programmer
-Must be compiled or interpreted (translated into machine language)
-Include FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, PL/1, PASCAL, ADA, and C
Nonprocedural Languages (4GL)
-Also referred to as productivity languages
-Use more English-like statements for program instructions
-Easier to use, write, and less error-prone
-Use a built-in interpreter to convert to machine language
-Take much longer to execute than 3GLs
-Include FOCUS, CA-Ramis, IFPS, and SAS

Executive information system (EIS):
-Delivers online current information about business conditions in aggregate form
-Easily accessible to senior executives and other managers
-Designed to be used without intermediary assistance
-Uses state-of-the-art graphics, communications and data storage methods

Knowledge management (KM):
-Set of practical and action-oriented management practices
-Involves strategies and processes of identifying, creating, capturing, organizing, -transferring, and leveraging knowledge to help compete
-Relies on recognizing knowledge held by individuals and the firm

Goals of hierarchical decomposition:
-To cope with system complexity
-To analyze or change part of the system
-To design and build each subsystem at different times
-To direct the attention of a target audience
-To allow system components to operate more independently

Functions of an interface:
-Filtering
-Coding/decoding
-Error detection and correction
-Buffer
-Security
-Summarizing

Process of creating a DFD:
-Identify entities that supply or use system information
-Distinguish processes from data they use or produce
-Explicate business rules that affect transformation of data to information
-Identify logical relationships
-Pinpoint duplicate storage and movement of data

Prototyping pendekatan:
-Takes advantage of availability of fourth generation procedural languages and relational database management systems
-Enables creation of system (or part of system) more quickly, then revise after users have tried it
-Is a type of evolutionary development process

Evaluation steps:
-Review vendors’ responses from RFPs
-Request demonstrations of leading packages
-Request references from users of software packages in other companies
-Assess how well package capabilities satisfy company’s needs
-Understand extent of any additional development efforts or costs to tailor software
-Make decision