What if analysis works forward from known or assumed conditions

MIS Management Information System

[Chapter 6 Databases and Information Management]

1. An administrator in a veterinarian hospital has set up an Excel spreadsheet that has the column head such as, PetName, PetType, OwnerPhone, OwnerName, OwnerEmail, Service, ServiceDate, and ServiceCharge. (5 points)

a. With this data structure, if the data are kept being added, what kind of problems may the administrator encounter? Explain why it would be problematic when the data are kept added.

b. What would be a good approach to resolve the above mentioned problems?

[Chapter 7 Telecommunications]

2. The following diagram illustrates the four layers of the TCP/IP reference model for communications. (5 points)

fig06

a. If we try to send a long message all at once, what will happen to the message while traveling over the internet?

b. Describe how the long message created by Computer A can be delivered to Computer B over the internet.

c. Which communications layer helps to find the destination communications node on the internet? What devices are necessary to deliver the communications packets between the source node and destination node? What do they do to delive the packets?

d. If a message packet is found to be lost, what communications layer is taking care of the lost packet? How does it operate to recover the lost packet? What impact does it have for the communications speed?

[Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge]

3. Some countries in the Middle East spread out wide in the vast area. Driving with a car through the great desert is not safe on the roads covered by sands under the extreme weather condition. So, people in those countries prefer to fly while shipping their cars to an auto transportation businesses to let them transport their cars and get their cars at the destination. To set up an auto transportation business, we want to build a database based information system. Answer the following questions to think of the auto transportation business. (5 points)

a. Describe how the business processes should be set up for the sending branch, the receiving branch, and the headquarter, once a customer dropped his/her car to their sender location, including the database handling.

b. To realize the set business processes for vehicle transportation, what physical entitties are required to run the operation successfully?

c. For the database to help the business operation, we need at least three types of information, such as CUSTORMER, SENDER, RECEIVER. What data items should be included in these three types of data?

d. The headquarter needs to monitor the performance of all branch operations. What kind of measures (that is, metrics) can be set to check the performance of the overall auto transport operation?

[Chapter 12 Enhancing Decision Making]

4. A(n) ________ decision is repetitive and routine, for which known procedures provide solutions.

Answer:

5. When managers represent their company in the outside world and perform symbolic duties, they are acting in their ________ role.

Answer:

6. The management methodology of using a firm's strategy to generate operational targets for the business and measuring progress towards them using the firm's enterprise systems is called

A) the balanced scorecard method.

B) benchmarks.

C) KPIs.

D) BPM.

7. Web-based tools for videoconferencing and electronic meetings are the primary tools for GDSS.

Answer: True False

8. What-if analysis works forward from known or assumed conditions.

Answer: True False

[Chapter 13 Building Information System]

9. During the System Design phase, the developer may produce very complicated system specifications and system architectures to impress their customer, while the users cannot understand them. What the users should ask the developer about this situation? (2 points)

10. Conducting a big project requires a lot of personnel and resources. In the big project, there are more people are invloved in system analysis, system development, and decision making, which makes the project progress very slow. In this situation, answer the following questions. (3 points)

a. If the big project is not effectively progressing, what can be considered to improve the situation?

b. If the new approach is adopted, what needs to be done about the complicated user requirements?