Chapter 11- Information Systems Management

The major function sof the information sustems department are :

• Plan the use of IS to accomplish organizational goals and strategy.
• Develop,operate,and maintain the organizations computing infrastructure
• Develop,operate,and maintain enterprise applications
  
• Protect information assets
  
• Manage outsourcing relationships

Chief information officer- is the title of the principal manger of the IS department,it varies from organization to organization.
A steering committee is a group of senior managers from the major business functions that work with the CIO to set the IS priorities and decide among major IS projects and alternatives.

There are three important task in managing the computing infrastructure:

• Create and maintain infrastructurre for end-user computing
• Create,operate,and maintain networks
• Create,operate,and maintain data centers,data warehouses,and data marts

Enterprise Application Integration-include intermediary layers of software,and possibly intermediary databases to enable the integration of disparate systems.
Data administration describes a function that pertains to all of an organization's data assets.
Data standards- are definitions,or metadata,for data items shared across the organization.
A data dictionary is a file or database that contains data definitions.
Outsourcing is the process of hiring another organization to perform a service.
Risk of outsourcing is loss of control,potential loss of intellectual capital,outsource vendor may change managementand the outsource vendor may change its pricing strategy over time.
Cloud computing is a form of hardware/software outsourcing in which organizations offer flexible plans for customers to lease hardware and software facilities.
A legacy information system is one that has outdated technologies and techniques but is still used,despite its age.
Virtualization is the process whereby multiple operating systems share the same computer hardware,usually a server.
Green computing -is environmentally conscious computing consisting of three major components:power management,virtualization,and e-waste management.

Chapter 10-- Managing Development

Systems development- is the process of creating and maintaining information systems.
Brooke's Law- adding more people to a late project make the project later.
Systems development life cycle(SDLC)- is the classic process used to develop information systems
Phases: 1. System definition 2. Requirements analysis 3. Component design 4. Implementation 5. System Maintenance
Feasibility has four dimensions:cost,schedule,technical,and organizational feasibility.
Systems analysts are IS professionals who understand both business and technology.
A test plan consists of sequences of actions that users will take when using the new system
Product quality assurance-construct the test plan with the advice and assistance of users.
Beta testing-process of allowing future system users to try out the new system on their own.
System conversion converting business activity from the old system to the new.
Pilot installation- organization implements the entire system on a limited portion of the business.
Phased installation-new system is installed in phases across the organization.
Parallel installation-new system runs in parallel with the old one until the new system is tested and fully operational.
Plunge installation- organization shuts off the old system and starts the new system.
Projects that spend so much time documenting requirements are sometimes said to be in analysis paralysis.
Trade-offs are balancing of three critical drivers,requirements,cost,and time.
Diseconomies of scale-situation that occurs when adding more resources creates inefficiencies,such as those that occur when adding more people to a late project.
Work-breakdown structure- is a hierarchy of the tasks required to complete a project.
Critical path is the sequence of activities that determine the earliest date by which the project can be completed.
Critical path analysis- is the process by which project managers compress the schedule by moving resources,typically people,from noncritical path tasks onto critical path tasks.
A function point is simply a feature or function of the new program.
The challenges of managing IS development projects arise from four different factors. 1. coordination2. diseconomies of scale 3. configuration control 4. unexpected events
Configuration control refers to a set of management policies,practices,and tools that developers uses to maintain control over the project's resources.
Requirements creep- the process by which users agree to one set of requirements,then add a bit more,then add a bit more,and so forth.

Chapter 9--Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence- information containing patterns,relationships,and trends
Business Intelligence system-an information system that employs business intelligence tools to produce and deliver information.
Business intelligence tool-is one or more computer programs that implement a particular BI technique.
Reporting tools-programs that read data from a variety of sources,process that data,format it into a structured reports,and deliver those reports to the user who need them.
Data mining-tools-process data using statistical techniques,many of which are sophisticated and mathematically complex.
Knowledge-management tools-are used to store employee knowledge and to make that knowledge available t0 employees,customers,vendors,auditors, and others who need it.
A business intelligence application-is the use of a tool on a particular type of data for a particular purpose.
A reporting application- is a BI application that inputs data from one or more sources and applies a reporting tool to that data to produce information
Reporting tools produce information from data using five basic operations: sorting,grouping,calculating,filtering,formatting
RFM analysis is a technique readily implemented using reporting tools is used to analyze and rank customers according to their purchasing patterns
Online analytical processing- a second type of reporting tool is more generic than RFM.
Unsupervised data mining- analysts do not create a model or hypothesis before running the analysis.
A decision tree is a hierarchical arrangement of criteria that predict a classification or a value.
To address these problems,many organizations choose to extract operational data into facilities called data warehouse and data marts.
Curse of dimensionality-the more attributes there are the easier its is to build a model that fits the sample data but that is worthless as a predictor.
Knowledge management is the process of creating value from intellectual capital and sharing that knowledge with employees,managers ,suppliers,customers,and others who need it.
Real simple syndication is a standard for subscribing to content sources.
Expert Systems- attempt to capture human expertise and put it into a format that can be used non experts.
A business intelligence application server- delivers those results in a variety of formats to devices for consumption by BI users.
Portal servers- are like web servers except that they have a customizable user interface.