Professional MBA: IS 6800 Syllabus

Management Information Systems
Fall, 2005

Course Instructor:

Dr. Mary C. Lacity
233 Computer Center Building
(314) 516-6127 (work)
(314) 516-6827 (fax)

Email: Mary.Lacity@umsl.edu
Homepage: http:/www.umsl.edu/~lacity

Course Description:

On average, companies spend 5% of revenues on information technology (IT). Thus a company with $2 billion in sales will, on average, spend $100 million per year on IT. That same company may carry as much as $200 million worth of IT assets on the balance sheet. Do such IT expenditures generate value? This course is designed for general managers to help ensure the answer is "yes" for their organizations. The course focuses on the proven practices in organizing IT departments, core IT capabilities, gaining a competitive advantage through IT, managing large IT-based investment projects, capitalizing on the global outsourcing market, and managing stakeholder expectations and perceptions of IT.

Course Instructor:

Dr. Mary Lacity is a Professor of Information Systems at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Research Affiliate at Templeton College, Oxford University, and Doctoral Faculty Advisor at Washington University. Her research interests focus on IT management practices in the areas of sourcing, IT privatization, relationship management, and project management. She has conducted case studies in over 100 organizations and has surveyed both US and European IT managers on their management practices. She has given executive seminars world-wide and has served as an expert witness for the US Congress. She was the recipient of the 2000 World Outsourcing Achievement Award sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Michael Corbett and Associates. She has written five books : Netsourcing Business Applications (Prentice Hall, 2002; co-authors Thomas Kern and Leslie Willcocks); Global IT Outsourcing: Search for Business Advantage (Wiley, 2001; co-author Leslie Willcocks) ; Strategic Sourcing of Information Systems (Wiley, 1997;co-author Leslie Willcocks); Beyond the Information Systems Outsourcing Bandwagon: The Insourcing Response (Wiley, 1995; co-author Rudy Hirschheim) and Information Systems Outsourcing: Myths, Metaphors, and Realities (Wiley, 1993; co-author Rudy Hirschheim). Her more than 50 publications have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, IEEE Computer, Communications of the ACM and many other academic and practitioner outlets. She is Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly Executive and US Editor of the Journal of Information Technology. She has previously worked as a consultant for Technology Partners International and as a systems analyst for Exxon Company, USA.

Course Materials:

Readings to be distributed to students

Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York, 2005

Slides to be printed by students from Internet prior to class

Please bring to class on Saturday Sept 17:

Any photos you would like to load on your web pages stored as .gif or .jpg

Any documents you would like to load, such as a resume in .pdf or .doc format

Course Contact Hours:

Day & Date	Time	Room
Saturday, 8/27	9:30-10:30	133 SSB
Saturday 9/17	1:30 pm to 5:30 pm	3 CCB
Friday, 10/14	1:30 pm to 5:30 pm	3 CCB
Saturday, 10/15	1:30 pm to 5:30 pm	3 CCB
Friday, 11/11	1:30 pm to 5:30 pm	3 CCB
Saturday, 11/12	1:30 pm to 5:30 pm	3 CCB
Friday, 12/9	1:30 pm to 5:30 pm	3 CCB

Absentee Policy for Professional MBA-Online IS 6800:

As our course only meets face-to-face a few times, it is vital that students attend all sessions. Please make attendance your number one priority. Your attendance is vital not only because you will be absorbing information, but because your class participation and insights are very valuable--you each add value to the quality of the contact hours. In the rare circumstance that a student must miss a class, please follow the following absentee procedure:

1. Please notify me and the graduate office (516-5885) as soon as possible
2. We will arrange an audio or video recording of the class
3. We will send the audio/video recording to the student
4. To motivate the student to listen/watch the audio/video recording, I will attach a set of short-answer questions about the recordings.
5. The student can email their answers to me one week after receiving the recordings.

Course Grades:

PERCENT	REQUIREMENT	DUE DATE
5%	Web Pages	Friday, Sept 30 9AM
10%	Does IT Matter? Essay	Monday Oct 10, 9AM
5%	Quiz 1	Wednesday Oct 12, 9AM
10%	Nature of IT Presentation	Friday Oct 14 during class
5%	Quiz 2	Monday Oct 24, 9AM
25%	Oral Group Presentation	November 11 & 12
5%	Quiz 3	Monday Nov 28 9AM
25%	Final Paper	Friday Dec 9 1:30 PM
10%	Active Class Participation

Webpage Assignment

The first assignment in IS 6800 is to create a personal web page following a standard format. These pages have traditionally been used as our MBA/MS "face book" to help faculty and other students get to know each other. Students will be responsible for building their own web pages. While the basic technical skills are simple and will be taught during class, the assignment allows for personal creativity. Most students find this exercise fun and worth-while.

Web page assignment
Standard Home Page
How Web Pages will be Graded

Essay 1: Does IT Matter?

Please read the following before answering the essay:

Carr, N., “IT Doesn’t Matter," Harvard Business Review, Vol. 81, 5, May 2003, pp. 41-49.

Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York, 2005, pages 3 to 172

A. Compare and contrast the views Carr and Friedman have concerning the impact of information technology on:

a country’s competitive advantage in the global market place

a company’s competitive advantage within an industry in the global market place

an individual’s competitive advantage in the global market place

B. Briefly summarize the authors’ major assumptions about the nature of IT

C. Briefly provide a critique of each author’s assumptions about the nature of IT

Your essay should be between 3 and 5 pages, single spaced. Please use a 12 point font. You may cite additional resources to answer the question.

Please save your essay in a file called: EASSAY1YOURLASTNAME.DOC

Please send me your essay via email with “ESSAY1 by YOUR NAME” in the subject line

Quizzes:

The purpose of the quizzes is to provide a basic understanding of the material (and to ensure you read the articles!), the subsequent class discussion will provide more erudite analysis. Quizzes will be distributed via email using your gateway accounts.

Quiz 1 on ROLE OF CIO Readings

Weill, P., "Don't Just Lead: Govern: How Top Performing Firms Govern IT," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 3, 1, March 2004, pp. 1-17.

Kaarst-Brown, M., “Understanding An Organization’s View of the CIO: The Role of Assumptions About IT, MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 4, 2, June 2005, pp. 287-301.

Levinson, M., “CIO and CEO: How to Work with Your Boss,” CIO Magazine, Oct 1, 2004.

Please save your Quiz in a file called: QUIZ1YOURLASTNAME.DOC

Please send me your Quiz via email with “QUIZ1 by YOUR NAME” in the subject line

Quiz 2 on PROJECT MANAGEMENT Readings

Keil, M., and Montealegre, R., "Cutting Your Losses: Extricating Your Organization When A Big Project Goes Awry," Sloan Management Review, Spring 2000, pp. 55-68.

Subramanian, A., and Lacity, M., "Managing Client Server Implementations: Today's Technology, Yesterday's Lessons" Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 12, 3, 1997, pp. 169-186.

Brown, C., and Vessey, I., "Managing the Next Wave of Enterprise Systems: Leveraging Lessons from ERP," MISQ Executive Vol.2, 1, March 2003, pp. 65-77.

Roberts, B., Jarvenpaa, S., Baxley, C., "Evolving at the Speed of Change: Mastering Change Readiness," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 2,2, September 2003, pp. 58-73.

Please save your Quiz in a file called: QUIZ2YOURLASTNAME.DOC

Please send me your Quiz via email with “QUIZ2 by YOUR NAME” in the subject line

Quiz 3 on OUTSOURCING I.T. AND BUSINESS PROCESSES Readings:

Cullen, S., Seddon, P., and Willcocks, “Managing Outsourcing: The Life Cycle Imperative,” MIS Quarterly Executive, March 2005, pp. 229-246

Rottman, J., and Lacity, M., "Proven Practices for IT Offshore Outsourcing," Cutter Consortium, Vol. 5, 12, 2004, pp. 1-27..

Lacity, M., Feeny, D., and Willcocks, L., "Transforming a Back Office Function: Lesson from BAE Systems' Experience with an Enterprise Partnership," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 2, 2, September 2003, pp. 86-103.

Please save your Quiz in a file called: QUIZ3YOURLASTNAME.DOC

Please send me your Quiz via email with “QUIZ3 by YOUR NAME” in the subject line

Nature of IT Presentation:

The purpose of this presentation is to tie the concepts we learn in class and in the readings to the context of an organization with which member(s) of the group are familiar. Each group will present a 15 minute power point presentation on the IT function from one organization. The larger the organization, the better.

For each IT function, please quickly cover:

How the IT function is organized, (including who the CIO reports to)

Headcount of IT department, Headcount of entire company

Size of IT budget, Size of Total Company Revenues (Calculate the IT budget as % of revenue)

The meat of the presentation should be a focus on a concrete example of something specific from the IT department. Good examples include:

An annual IT Budget (A summary report of 1-2 pages is all that is needed)

An annual strategic IT Plan (A strategic plan is usually less than 10 pages)

An Acquisition Request for Capital Investment in IT related project (Again, this is usually less than 10 pages but may have appendices)

A Master Service Level Agreement (These can be quite long, but a few examples will suffice)

It would be great if you could distribute hard copies of any specific documents to class members, but some organizations may not allow this, thus you may have to abstract the basic ideas in power point.

If you have other ideas of something interesting to share with the class, please let me know.

Nature of IT Presentation Grades

I will use the following form to grade the presentation: nature of IT grade form

Oral Group Presentation:

The class will be divided into six groups. Each group is responsible for presenting a 60 minute module to the class. Each group is to substantially explore an important IT topic. Some good choices include:

Great Topics previously used by students, thus a good choice!	Potentially great topics that have never been done before.
The role of the CIO	Business Intelligence
Business-to-Business Exchanges	Security & Privacy
Offshore Outsourcing	CMM & ISO Certification
Starting your own IT company	Information Architecture
Enterprise Resource Planning	Open Systems
Customer Relationship Management	Recruiting, Developing & Retaining IT Professionals
Knowledge Management	IT Services Industries in Developing Countries
Using IT as a Competitive Weapon
Supply Chain Management

RESEARCH BASE:

Each group should research at least 20 external references such as journal articles, newspapers, or relevant websites. At least 10 of these references must be from refereed journals, such as Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, and Academy of Management Executive. Refereed journals assure some level of validation. The best source to find refereed journal articles is ABI-INFORM, available online to UMSL students. I will show you how to conduct a search. Be sure to also check high-quality but non-refereed publications such as the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Economist, etc for relevant articles.

Students are highly encouraged to conduct original case studies. Most students chose one to three organizations from among the group members' workplaces. Case studies comprise original interviews and internal and external company documents, but refer to guidelines for your specific topic. In rare cases, none of the students in a given group may have access to organizations to conduct original case studies. Students may use relevant teaching cases from reputable teaching case outlets such as the Harvard Business School (See http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/), McGraw Hill Primis Online, (see http://www.mhhe.com/primis/catalog/pcatalog/casebook.htm), Idea Group Publishing IT Cases (see http://www.it-case-studies.com/), or Case Clearing House (see http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/ or http://www.ecchatbabson.org/) The main drawback is that it is very difficult for students to answer questions if they base their presentation on second-hand material.

PRESENTATION TIMING:

Each group should spend their time in approximately the following way: (Again, some topics lend themselves to a slightly different format, so be sure to look at my links to your topic.)

Overview of the topic. Provide general statistics about your topic; why is your topic important to general managers? How much money do companies spend on your topic? (See specific statistics suggested for each topic in associated webpages.)(~10 minutes)

Case-based Data: Explain your topic using real organizations. (~30 minutes)

Generalizations: Extract a set of lessons or best practices for the general manager; tie these lessons back to the case studies. The audience should be able to be very involved in this part of the presentation. (~10 minutes)

Each group should only plan 50 minutes of content to allow 10 minutes of audience interaction during the presentation. Think of yourselves not as formal speakers, but as teachers. Just as I incorporate your input throughout my presentations, you too should incorporate the audience during the entire presentation.

PRESENTATION MATERIALS:

q Each group will develop power point slides and provide a copy of the slides for the instructor and classmates prior to the presentation. Please print only 2 slides per page so your classmates may use the handouts as study guides.

q Please also provide instructor with an electronic copy of the presentation so it may be posted to the IS 6800 website. Please use the following naming conventions:

oloralf05g1.ppt or oloralf05g1.pdf (From Group 1)

oloralf05g2.ppt or oloralf05g2.pdf (From Group 2)

oloralf05g3.ppt or oloralf05g3.pdf (Etc.)

oloralf05g4.ppt or oloralf05g4.pdf

oloralf05g5.ppt or oloralf05g5.pdf

oloralf05g6.ppt or oloralf05g6.pdf

CITATIONS:

Make sure that every slide appropriately credits sources, be it an interview, printed material, or web site. Printed material should be referenced with Author, Title, Journal (if appropriate), Month, Year, and page numbers. For example:

Book:
Lacity, Mary, and Willcocks, Leslie, Global Information Technology Outsourcing: Search For Business Advantage, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2001.

Journal Article:
Subramanian, A., and Lacity, M., "Managing Client Server Implementations: Today's Technology, Yesterday's Lessons" Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 12, 3, 1997, pp. 169-186.

If your slides get too busy, then simply use end notes, such as embedding (1) on actual slide and attaching a list with numbers:

(1)Lacity, Mary, and Willcocks, Leslie, Global Information Technology Outsourcing: Search For Business Advantage, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2001.
(2) Subramanian, A., and Lacity, M., "Managing Client Server Implementations: Today's Technology, Yesterday's Lessons" Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 12, 3, 1997, pp. 169-186.
(3) Ibid, p. 184.

Websites:

Please indicate full URL for web site references, and date viewed. For example:

www.umsl.edu/~lacity/ms480sum.htm, viewed January 1, 2002.

Interviews:

Please indicate name (if not anonymous), title of interviewee, type of interview (in person, phone, videoconference) ,people at the interview, and date of interview. For example:

John Smith, CIO of BigCompany, interviewed in person by Jane Doe and Fred Davis, January 6, 2004.
Ian Jones, Director of Applications, BigCompany, interviewed by phone by Jane Doe and Fred Davis, February 8, 2004.

DO NOT PLAGERIZE!!!!

You may not copy directly from sources unless you indent the text and put it in quotes. This would normally be reserved for a few sentences of specific quotations.

You must RE-WORD sources! You are using external references as INPUT to your originally created OUTPUT.

I am very happy to work with groups on their specific topic. I strongly suggest that I meet with your groups several times. At a MINIMUM, I want to review your power point slides at least a week before your presentation. Please feel free to email, call, or make an appointment.

Oral Group Presentation Grades:

Print oral group grade form prior to your presentation.

After your presentation, fill in the form by evaluating your perception of your own performance, as best you can. After the presentations, I go home and fill in the evaluation for each student, making notes as to why I assigned the score I did. We will swap evaluations. It is usually very useful to see if our evaluations are similar or dissimilar. I strive to identify opportunities to make you even better presenters in the future. Sometimes you think you did something poorly and I think you communicated effectively. Sometimes you think you were effective and the entire class was confused. We can use both our evaluations to discuss your performance if you wish. Please feel free to make an appointment if you wish to discuss your grades.

Group Paper:

Just as your group will prepare slides for an oral presentation, your group will also prepare a paper based on your topic. The paper would normally have the same headings and sequence of your oral presentation, but will be much more detailed. In the past, students have complained that they could not remember enough of the interesting facts from oral presentations, and thus wished to have a fully documented paper to accompany the presentation. Please be sure to fully cite all references as described above. As with your oral projects, I am happy to quickly pre-read drafts of your paper for high-level feedback.

You must hand in one hard copy to me as well as an electronic copy (email or disk). To distribute to your classmates, I will create a webpage with hypertext links to your papers. Please use the following naming conventions:

olpaperf05g1.ppt or olpaperf05g1.pdf (From Group 1)

olpaperf05g2.ppt or olpaperf05g2.pdf (From Group 2)

olpaperf05g3.ppt or olpaperf05g3.pdf (Etc.)

olpaperf05g4.ppt or olpaperf05g4.pdf

olpaperf05g5.ppt or olpaperf05g5.pdf

olpaperf05g6.ppt or olpaperf05g6.pdf

The papers are typically 20-25 pages long, single spaced, including embedded figures and references. But my main concern is quality. Again, I am happy to quickly look through drafts as you develop your paper.

I will grade the paper using the following criteria: paper grade form .

Adjusting Group Grades For the Oral Presentation and Written Paper

Individuals in a group never contribute the exact equal amounts of time, content, and value. This often leads to some people feeling they worked more than others, and some people feeling left out. Usually a leader emerges, one who will hopefully help find the gifts of each individual. Unfortunately, I cannot effectively intervene in these matters, and rely on you as adults to ensure that all members of your group meaningfully contribute to the data gathering, interviewing, analysis, writing, slide design, presenting, and preparing the final document.

All group members will receive the same grade for Nature of IT oral presentation and the paper, provided that all members agree that each individual made a contribution. In order to provide some accountability, albeit imperfect, I will ask that each group fill in the following form and each group member must sign it. This form is due on the last day of class, along with your paper submission.

Please print a copy of: group contribution form .

CLASS SCHEDULE, READINGS, AND ASSIGNMENTS

Saturday, August 27 Orientation 9:30-10:30

Accompanying Reading:

Why General Managers Need to Study MIS

Luftman, J., and McLean, E., "Key Issues for IT Executives 2004," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 4, 2, June 2005, pp. 269-286.

Please print a copy of class overheads for the course overview no sooner than two days before the start of class.

Saturday, September 17, 1:30-5:30

Course Overview, Individuals Assigned to Groups, Group Topics Selected:

Estimated Class Time: 45 minutes
Presented by Lacity

Nature of IT in Organizations:

Lecture by Lacity:

Estimated time: 1 hour

Please print a copy of class overheads for the nature of IT discussion no sooner than two days before the start of class.

Break: Estimated time: 15 minutes

Creation of Webpages

Estimated Class Time: 2 hours

Please remember to bring to class:

Any photos you would like to load on your web pages stored as .gif or .jpg

Any documents you would like to load, such as a resume in .pdf or .doc format

Friday, October 14, 1:30-5:30

Role of the CIO

We have a wonderful opportunity to hear from CIOs about the vital role they play within their organizations.

Presentations by:

Mr. James Burdiss, Senior Vice President and CIO, Smurfit-Stone (!;30 to 3:00)

Mr. Eric Gorham, Director of Information Technology, Regional Justice Information Services (REJIS) (3:15 to 4:15)

Managing Large Scale IT Projects

Lecture by Lacity

Estimated Time: 1 hour
Please print class overheads Managing IT Projects no sooner than two days before the start of class

Saturday, October 15, 1:30-5:30

Role of the CIO

We have a wonderful opportunity to hear from CIOs about the vital role they play within their organizations.

Presentations by:

Mr. Michael Lecours, Director of Information Services, The Gund Company (1:30 to 2:30)

Nature of IT Presentations:

Estimated Class time: 2.5 hours

15 minutes maximum per group:

-- Organizational Charts of IT Function

-- Sample Budgets of an IT Function

-- Sample Strategic Plans of IT Function

-- Sample Acquisition Request

Friday, November 11, 1:30-5:30

Group 1:

Estimated Class Time: 60 minutes
Presented by Group 1

Break: 15 minutes

Group 2:

Estimated Class Time: 60 minutes
Presented by Group 2

Break: 15 minutes

Group 3:

Estimated Class Time: 60 minutes
Presented by Group 3

Saturday, November 12, 1:30-5:30

Group 4:

Estimated Class Time: 60 minutes
Presented by Group 4

Break: 15 minutes

Group 5:

Estimated Class Time: 60 minutes
Presented by Group 5

Break: 15 minutes

Group 6:

Estimated Class Time: 60 minutes
Presented by Group 6

Friday, December 9, 1:30-5:30

IS Sourcing Issues: Domestic and Offshore Sourcing of Business and IT Services:

Lecture by Lacity:

Estimated Time: 3 hours

Please print a copy of the overheads for IT Sourcing Practices no sooner than two days before the start of class