MIS 744 Information Systems Planning & Strategy

Fall 2004 Syllabus

Ken Peffers

Associate Professor of MISBEH 334

Tel. 895-3676Email:

Mobile 702 807-1181Office hours by appointment

Course website:

Accessibility

I know that all of you have very busy schedules, as do I. It is my intent to be as accessible as possible to help you with the learning process.

Please do:

  • Feel free to contact me by email if you have a question about the course.
  • Free to contact me by telephone if you have a question that will require some discussion.
  • You may use my mobile number, however, please use email rather than voicemail for messages.
  • There is no need to notify me if you’ll have to miss class.

Readings

Required

Corporate Information Strategy and Management: Text and Cases
by Lynda M. Applegate, Robert D. Austin, F. Warren McFarlan, Rob Austin, Lynda Applegate, Robert Austin. Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin; 6th edition (October 11, 2002)

ISBN: 0072456728

Supplementary
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economyby Carl Shapiro, Hal R. Varian (Hardcover - November 1998). Publisher: HarvardBusinessSchool Press; (November 1998) ISBN: 087584863X

Valuing Technology : The New Science of Wealth in the Knowledge Economy
by Chris Westland. Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (December 14, 2001)

ISBN: 047082056X

In addition, several supplemental readings have been placed on electronic reserve at the library.

Course Description

This course focuses on strategic information systems and information systems planning in the organization. These issues include information systems planning, sourcing IS development and services, evaluating risks to the organization that result from IS development and operation, the successful development of new systems.

Course Objectives

  • To understand the importance of IT to the success of the organization.
  • To understand strategic IT models and business models that impact strategic decisions about IT investments.
  • To understand major issues involved in IS planning and evaluation.
  • To develop a practical understanding of the portfolio approach to IS planning, organizing and leading the IT organization and the management of IT sourcing.
  • To make a unique contribution knowledge about IT management by exploring a problem or issue of special interest to you.

Conduct of the Course

The class is intendedly very participatory. One of the primary things that makes a graduate course valuable is the unique and interesting experiences of the participants. It is important that we use that experience as one of our primary resources from which to learn.

Classes

Class time will be used primarily to discuss readings and cases. Each of us should bring our own experiences to the class as the lens through which to interpret the readings and issues.

Prepare for class sessions by reading the assigned material in advance. For each class session bring to class, in hard copy, a brief note or position statement commenting on your thoughts about the issues raised in the readings. This is not an assignment. These are “talking notes” that will help us to be ready to have productive discussions in class. There is no special format for these documents except that they should have your name and the class date on them. They can be hand written or word processed. They won’t be qualitatively evaluated. You won’t receive feedback on them. They are for your use to support your class discussion.

I will use the “talking notes to record your prepared attendance at class. Please bring a copy for you and one to give to me at the beginning of class for use in recording prepared attendance. If you have to miss class, there is no need to email a copy of the notes to me or to notify me of your reasons for missing class. I’ll automatically excuse up to three sessions.

Cases

For each case there will be one or more members responsible for presenting the case and several class members responsible for leading off the class discussion. It is important that everyone is involved by preparing the material and participating in the discussion, if possible. A brief advance commentary on the case is expected. This commentary is not a summary of the case. It should describe your views, in brief, about the important issues of the case, your analysis of relevant facts, and your conclusions about the best course of action for managers.

Project

As important as it is to survey the whole range of concepts in brief, it is also very important to focus on one specific issue in depth, to understand it well and to make a unique contribution to knowledge. Each participant in the class should develop an individual project in which he or she studies a particular problem and makes a contribution to its solution. Suggested types of projects include:

  1. A case study or story about how managers in a firm (probably your firm) dealt (is dealing) with a problem in managing IT. I suggest that this be in the format of an article for a professional or executive journal, such as the Communications of the ACM or the California Management Review.
  2. A policy memorandum in which you analyze a specific IT problem, e.g., allocating a budget for IT capital expenses, sourcing for systems to support specific services in the organization, etc., related to your organization and propose a solution. A policy memorandum is addressed to managers. It would usually contain an executive summary, on the order of around one page in length, a body, where the issues are analyzed in depth, and an appendix for lists, calculations, spreadsheets, financial proformas, etc.
  3. A pilot implementation of a new method for managing IT, such as a method for IS planning, requirements determination, evaluation, risk assessment, sourcing, etc.

The above list isn’t exhaustive. I would encourage you to consider alternative types of projects. It is important to me and to you that your project for this class be something that will contribute to your value as a manager or executive and that it interests you. It is also important that this project be your own contribution and one that you make especially for this class, i.e., not something that you’ve already done for the firm. It is essential that we discuss any such idea in the first week or so of the class.

Project Deliverables

DeliverableDue

Project ideasSeptember 13, 2003

Early in the semester we’ll have a project ideation workshop in which we brainstorm ideas for projects. In advance of the class, you’ll prepare two ideas for your project. Bring along a half page description of each with a copy for me. Each member of the class will briefly present his or her ideas to the class. We’ll all try to make suggestions. This will help to give us a jump start on developing the project quickly.Hearing others’ ideas for projects may inspire you with a new idea for your own. Your “second best” idea may inspire someone else. Making up a slide show (one or two slides) is optional.

Project proposal (hard copy to class)September 20, 2003

Your proposal should include these parts: title, description of the issue or problem that you’re addressing, the setting in which you’ll work, how you will address the problem, and the nature of the outcomes you expect. Usually about 1 page +.

PresentationsOct 11 and Dec 6

1. A short, 5+ min, presentation on your proposal and your progress in implementing it. Your objective at this point is to demonstrate the project’s feasibility.

2. A formal, managerial oriented presentation of around 15 minutes, with appropriate media, of the problem, setting, method, results and implications.

ReportsDecember 6, 2003

The article, policy memorandum or other expected written outcome of your project.

Course Evaluation (tentative)

Preparation and participation25%

Project evaluation 25%

(a holistic evaluation of all four deliverables, in terms of timeliness, form and content)

Examination25%

Highest score among prep. and part, project, and exam25%

Marking participation, presentations, exams, and projects. I mark each contribution to the course on a scale of 0 to 5 as follows:

  1. Missing
  2. Clearly unsatisfactory
  3. Less than I would expect from a graduate student.
  4. Clearly satisfactory, but perhaps with some elements missing or not as deep as possible.
  5. Fine work, 100% correct or nearly so.
  6. Outstanding, going well beyond what is expected (rare).

Your grade for the course will depend on your overall score for the course compared to other students. The marks above don’t directly correspond to particular grades.

Planning Schedule

To be adjusted. Check the website weekly.

Session / Topic / Readings / Deliverables
Aug 30 / Course introduction
Sept 6 / Holiday
13 / What is strategy?
Project idea workshop / Day-two readings. See below. / Position statement Project Ideas (2)
20 / Strategic IT models / Ch 1, Applegate, Austin, McFarlan (AAM)
Case 1-1, Quicken Insurance / Written project proposals due
27 / Business models for networked economy / Ch 2, AAM
Case 1-2, Nasdaq Japan
Oct 4 / Building networked business / Ch 3, AAM
Case 2-2, PSA
11 / Justifying the networked business / Ch 4, AAM
Case 2-3, Internet Securities / Project Progress Reports
18 / IS Planning: evaluation / Westland, Valuing technology, Ch 3 & Ch 7
Case 1-3, Valuing the AOL, Time Warner Merger
25 / IS Planning: idea generation / Peffers, Gengler and Tuunainen, “Extending Critical Success Factors…” JMIS
Nov 1 / Portfolio approach to IS planning / Ch 10, AAM
Case 4-5, Destiny Web Solutions
8 / Organizing and leading IT / Ch 8, AAM
Case 4-3, Textronics, Inc
15 / Managing IT outsourcing / Ch 9, AAM
Case 4-2, Harley Davidson
22 / Exam
29
Dec 6 / Study week / Project Presentations Project Report Due

Day-two readings.

Darwin and the Demon: Innovating Within Established Enterprises, Geoffrey A Moore.Harvard Business Review.Boston: Jul/Aug 2004.Vol.82,Iss.7,8;pg.86

Knowing a Winning Business Idea When You See One. By: Kim, W. Chan; Mauborgne, Renee. HarvardBusinessReview, Sep/Oct2000, Vol. 78 Issue 5, p129, 9p, 3 diagrams; (AN 3521287)

The 21st Century CIO, Mark Polansky, Tarun Inuganti, Simon Wiggins.Business Strategy Review.Oxford: Summer 2004. Vol. 15, Iss. 2; p. 29

Value Innovation. By: Kim, W. Chan; Mauborgne, Renée. HarvardBusinessReview, Jul/Aug2004, Vol. 82 Issue 7/8, p172, 9p, 1 chart, 4 diagrams, 2c; (AN 13621087)

Which Way Should You Grow?, George S Day.Harvard Business Review.Boston: Jul/Aug 2004.Vol.82,Iss.7,8;pg.24

Additional Readings on reserve at the library.

Avison, D.E. and V. Taylor, “Information systems development methodologies: a classification according to problem situation,” Journal of Information Technology (1997) 12, 73-81.

Beachboard, J., “U.S. Bureau of Land Management: The Perils of Implementing Strategic Information Technology,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 11, 2003) 678-694.

Carr, Nicholas G. “IT Doesn't Matter,” Harvard Business Review, May2003, Vol. 81 Issue 5, p41, 9p.

Lacity, Mary C. and Willcocks, Leslie P.“An empirical investigation of information technology sourcing practices: Lessons from experience,” MIS Quarterly, Sep98, Vol. 22 Issue 3, p363, 46p

Letters to the Editor, “Does IT Matter? An HBR Debate,” HBR, Vol. 80, Issue 6, June 2003, 17 pp.

McLeod, R., Jr and E. Jordan, “Chapter 3,” Systems development: a project management approach,” Wiley: New York, pp. 168-194.

Peffers, K. and W. Ma, “An Agenda for Research about the Value of Payment Systems for Transactionsin Electronic Commerce,” The Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), 4:4,2003, 1-16.

Ross, Jeanne W. and Weill, Peter,“Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make.”Harvard Business Review, Nov2002, Vol. 80 Issue 11, p84, 8p.

1