6 question regarding purchasing and financial management of Information technology
lauren II
assignment_rules__questions.docxINSTRUCTIONS, RULES, AND GUIDELINES
1. Completing the exam:
a. Answers are to be recorded in Microsoft Word double-spaced; with each answer beginning on a new page.
b. You have until Friday, May 6, 2016 at 11:59 PM US Eastern Time to submit your exam.
c. Answer the question that is asked. Don't provide an answer that goes beyond the question. Most essay questions require at least a few paragraphs to answer. But most of these questions (or sub-questions) should not require more than 1-2 pages to answer. The length of an answer has nothing to do with the number of points awarded. In fact, if an answer gets too long, it may be difficult for me to find your correct answer. You want to write as concisely as possible, using sentences that are as short as possible. And you don't want to waste words by completely repeating the question as part of your answer.
d. Include APA style citations for any published books, articles, or papers that you decide to use to reinforce your answers. There exists a useful web app, called Son of Citation, that can help you generate APA citations.
e. The exam is designed to test understanding and application, not memory. 1. Simply repeating the slide content as an answer is generally worth, at most, 70% of the points for a question (meaning, a “C” grade-level answer). 2. Doing a “brain dump” that includes the answer plus a lot of items that are not part of the correct answer is generally worth, at most, 60% of the points available for a question (meaning, a “D” grade-level answer). 3. To obtain 80-100% of the points for any given answer, you need to demonstrate “comprehension”. Comprehension can take many forms including:
· showing how different concepts are related or different or a combination of both,
· explaining how concepts can be applied to real world situations,
· explaining the concepts to a less technical person,
· explaining how you might adapt concepts to new situations, or other approaches to demonstrate true comprehension.
f. Because this exam is out-of-class, points WILL be subtracted for spelling and grammar mistakes.
1. Explain how the components of IT policy are significant to IT purchasing.
2. As Deputy Director for IT Procurement, you need a process for approving or disapproving unplanned IT expenditures. Differentiate between planned and unplanned expenditures? What process should be implemented for unplanned expenditures? How might ‘commitment accounting’ be implemented to support this process?
3. You have been promoted to Associate CIO for your organization. One of your responsibilities is to administer all IT suppliers of hardware and software. Historically, your predecessors directly managed these hardware and software suppliers. Explain a few alternative strategies you might use. How will these alternative strategies change your supplier management relationships?
4. You have applied for a job as Executive Director of IT for a mature business. Your interviews include both IT managers (who would be working for you), and business managers (who would become your customers for all IT systems and services to be provided). During your interviews with the business managers, you learn that they believe that IT budgets and expenditures are growing significantly faster than the business as a whole. They believe that their budgets, while increasing slightly, are actually declining as a percentage of the business as a whole. And they believe that is adversely impacting potential investments that can and should be made in their areas of the business. They believe that IT expenditures either need to be cut, or that future IT investments need to be limited to a level that is more consistent with the business as a whole. Respond.
5. You are the director of the IT Project Office. In that role, you oversee all IT projects and project managers. You report to the CIO. In a private meeting with the CIO, he states: “Yes, we should do a TCO for all candidate projects. But I believe that we should only include incremental costs. Why? Because non-incremental costs are already budgeted; therefore, including them in a TCO gives our customer an overly inflated sense of the cost. That inflated cost might even lead them to withdraw support for the project before it even begins. Respond.
6. Your CIO has called a meeting of all of her direct reports. Yesterday, she met with her superior, the CEO, and he indicated that because of the current economic downturn, sales and profits have declined. The shareholders are insisting that costs be reduced accordingly in order to improve profitability. The CEO believes that IT expenditures can be reduced, but he is also concerned that essential IT service levels be sustained. Your CIO has called the meeting to discuss the implementation of implementing a chargeback strategy for IT. She believes that she can convince the CEO to continue funding infrastructure at the current levels, but that she wants to accept the elimination of the remaining IT budget in return for authority to charge back for those IT services that would no longer be centrally funded within the IT budget. Help her understand the pros, cons, and considerations for implementing her chargeback strategy.
