IS 5800 Syllabus

Management of Information Systems
Spring 2014

Course Hours: Thursday, 6:55 pm to 9:30pm, Room 005 Express Scripts Hall

Course Instructor:

Dr. Mary C. Lacity
233 Express Scripts Hall
(314) 516-6127 (work)
(314) 516-6827 (fax)

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

Office Hours: Thursday 5:45pm to 6:45pm (no appointment needed—just stop in!); other times by appointment

Course Description:

Bulletin description: This course provides an overview of the established and contemporary issues related to managing information systems within organizations. Topics include:

Global IT spend

Role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)

IT-enabled business processes (e.g., ERP, CRM, SCM)

Managing IT within and across organizations (i.e., IT strategy, governance, organizational structures, technology acceptance)

Impact of IT on organizational competitiveness and global economies

Managing IT-enabled projects; Systems analysis and design; Change management

Business Intelligence and Big Data

IT sourcing arrangements (offshore outsourcing, cloud computing)

IT issues related to security, privacy, intellectual property rights, and ethics

Societal impacts of IT such as Green IT

IT entrepreneurship

E-business technologies (HTML)

Business value of emergent technologies (e.g., RFID, Social Networking)

Course Instructor:

Dr. Mary Lacity is Curators’ Professor of Information Systems and an International Business Fellow at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is also Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, a Certified Outsourcing Professional ®, Co-Chair of the IAOP Midwest Chapter, Industry Advisor for the Outsourcing Angels and the Everest Group, Co-editor of the Palgrave Series: Work, Technology, and Globalization, and on the Editorial Boards for Journal of Information Technology, MIS Quarterly Executive, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal. Her research focuses on global outsourcing of business and IT services. She has conducted case studies and surveys of hundreds of organizations on their outsourcing and 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 2008 Gateway to Innovation Award sponsored by the IT Coalition, Society for Information Management, and St. Louis RCGA and the 2000 World Outsourcing Achievement Award sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Michael Corbett and Associates. She has published 16 books, most recently The Rise of Legal Services Outsourcing (Bloomsbury Publishing, London, forthcoming in 2013; co-authors Leslie Willcocks and Andrew Burgess.) and Advanced Outsourcing Practice: Rethinking ITO, BPO, and Cloud Services (Palgrave, London, 2012; co-author Leslie Willcocks). Her 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 was Program Co-chair for ICIS 2010. Before earning her Ph.D. at the University of Houston, she worked as a consultant for Technology Partners International and as a systems analyst for Exxon Company, USA.

Course Materials:

I have tried to select the highest quality readings. Readings are available on MYGATEWAY. You may also download readings from the online libraries available to all UMSL students.

We will also read selected chapters from two books. Check Google Books, as sometimes first two chapters can be read online for free. New and used books may also be purchased from Amazon.

Citation

Chapters we read and discuss

Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York, 2007. ISBN: 0-374-29278-7

Chapters 1 & 2

Rogers, E.M., Diffusion of Innovations, New York, Free Press, 2006, fourth or fifth edition.

ISBN: 0743222091

Chapters 1

You will need access to an HTML guide. Choose any HTML guide that includes HTML Extended Color Names and HTML Tag References. If you do not wish to buy an HTML reference book, you may find all the HTML help you need online:

Use this for extended codes: http://immigration-usa.com/html_colors.html

http://www.htmldog.com/reference/htmltags/

Course Grades:

PERCENT	REQUIREMENT	DUE DATE
10%	Web Page Assignment	Monday, February 10, 8:00 am 10 points are deducted for each day the assignment is late. First 10 points deducted at 8:01am of due date.
20%	Exam I	Thursday, February 20 in class
20%	Exam II	Thursday, March 20 in class
30%	Oral Group Presentation	See schedule below
20%	Exam III	Thursday, May 8 in class

Exams:

Students will take 3 exams, but may drop the lowest exam score. If students are satisfied with their first two exams, they do not have to sit for the third exam provided they attended all the student oral presentations or write 250 word essays on each missed presentation.

The instructor will email a tentative grade after the oral group presentations have all been graded. The student may accept the tentative grade as the final grade, or may elect to sit for the third exam.

The exams will cover material from the assigned readings, assigned videos/webinars, professor’s lectures, group presentations, handouts, and assignments. Exams are NOT cumulative. No make up exams will be given without prior instructor permission or under extreme documentable circumstances.

Based on years of experience, students are much more likely to perform well on exams if students:

A. Closely read required readings

B. Closely watch webinars and required videos

C. Actively participate in your learning—take notes, ask questions if you have any, engage in discussions with your group members

If student have done A through C, studying for the exam is much easier because students may primarily study from the slides and briefly review readings. Students who have earned As on past exams report that they have followed A through C and studied for the exam for 5 to 10 hours the week prior to the exam. I suggest you schedule time each week to read assignments and schedule 5 to 10 hours the week prior to the exam for studying.

If students have not done A through C, students find it overwhelming to read all the assignments and watch all the webinars in the week prior to the exam.

I want you all to succeed! Please follow my advice!

Webpage Assignment:

The first assignment in IS 5800 is to create a personal web page following a standard format. In addition to providing a context for learning HTML, these pages help me and other students get to know one another. Students will be responsible for building their own web pages. While the technical skills will be taught during the class sessions, the assignment allows for personal creativity. Most students find this exercise fun and worthwhile.

Web page assignment
Standard Home Page

http://www.umsl.edu/~lacitym/mis480a.htm

How Web Pages will be Graded

Oral Group Presentation:

The class will be divided into 8 groups. Each group is responsible for presenting a 50 to 55 minute presentation to the class. Each group will be assigned a different IT topic:

Group 1: The role of the CIO

Group 2: Business Intelligence
Group 3: Emerging Technologies: RFID
Group 4: Green IT

Group 5: IT Security and Privacy
Group 6: Emerging Technologies: corporate uses of social networks

Group 7: Cloud Computing
Group 8: IT Entrepreneurs

Important Information for Group Projects:

Advice and Checklists for Oral Group Presentations

Information about required Secondary Sources

Watch recording on finding academic articles (in mygateway under GROUP PROJECT MATERIALS folder)

Information about required Primary Sources

Watch webinar on interview tips (in mygateway under GROUP PROJECT MATERIALS folder)

Information about Citations

PRESENTATION TIMING: The entire presentation should be between 50 and 55 minutes

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? What are the promised benefits of this topic if properly managed? What are the potential pitfalls if mis-managed? What will we learn from your presentation? If you cite surveys, YOU MUST TELL US ABOUT THE SAMPLE in terms of size of organizations that participated (such as Fortune 500), geographic dispersion (such as U.S. or global), sample size, and date of data collection. You'll be surprised how surveys report very different figures because of sample diversity. (~5 to 10 minutes)

Real–world examples: Explain your topic with rich examples based on your primary and secondary sources. (For the CIO group, “examples” would be stories of actual CIOs. For corporate uses of social networks, “examples” might include examples of how specific companies engage customers in social media sites; for RFID group, “examples” may include how RFID is used in medicine, or business, etc.) Why did you select these examples? How are they representative of the lessons you are trying to demonstrate? (~20 to 25 minutes)

Generalizations/Lessons Learned/Best Practices: Do a cross-case comparison of similarities and differences among the examples. Extract a set of lessons or best practices for the general manager; tie these lessons back to the examples. (~5 minutes)

Audience Activity. Each group should only plan 40 to 45 minutes of content to allow 5 to 10 minutes of audience interaction. In the past, students have done very creative things for audience participation including “Name that Entrepreneur”, a short Jeopardy game, a short survey, Taboo game, stand up sit down, etc. Groups normally reward participation with small prizes like candy. (~5 to 10 minutes)

PRESENTATION MATERIALS:

Each group will develop power point slides (or Prezi).

On the day of your presentation, please provide a STAPLED, hardcopy set of slides for your instructor. Please print only 2 slides per page.

Please load your final power point slides in GROUP X Group Pages under FILE EXCHANGE.

Please name the final version of your power point slides exactly as indicated below:

Group	Oral Presentation File Name *File names are case sensitive*
Group 1: The role of the CIO	cios14.pptx
Group 2: Business Intelligence	bis14.pptx
Group 3: Emerging Technologies: RFID	rfids14.pptx
Group 4: Green IT	greens14.pptx
Group 5: IT Security and Privacy	secures14.pptx
Group 6: Emerging Technologies: Corporate Blogs/Social Networks	socials14.pptx
Group 7: Cloud Computing	clouds14.pptx
Group 8: IT Entrepreneurs	Entreprens14.pptx

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 me to make an appointment if you cannot meet before or after class.

Oral Group Presentation Grades:

Oral presentations are graded as a group grade rather than as individual grades. Oral group presentations will be graded using the following form: oral group grade form

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, slide design, and presenting the final project.

All group members will receive the same grade for the oral presentation, provided that all members agree that each individual made a significant contribution. If a group member has not meaningfully or fully participated, I will assume that group member was legitimately distracted by other life issues such as illness or heavy work travel. I do expect that members who do not fully participate show their integrity by willingly reducing their percentage of contribution. It is no shame to not fully participate because of legitimate reasons. It is a great shame to expect other group members to falsely report contribution percentages.

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 day of presentation.

Please print, fill in, and have every member sign a copy of: group contribution form .

Grading Policy

Because students may drop an exam, the final average is calculated using the following formula:

(Web grade *.10) + (Best Exam Score *.20) + (Second Best Exam Score *.2) + (Oral Grade *.30)

.80

The letter grades use the following scale:

92.00 or above	A
90.00 to 91.99	A-
88.00 to 89.99	B+
82.00 to 87.99	B
80.00 to 81.99	B-
78.00 to 79.99	C+
72.00 to 77.99	C
70.00 to 71.99	C-
Below 70.00	F

Grading Philosophy. Professors do not “give” grades. Students “earn” grades. I take grading very seriously. I thoughtfully grade each assessment item on the assessment sheets. A sub-culture has emerged among some (certainly not all) graduate students that graduate students are “customers” and that everything they do should be given an A. Such a view dilutes the value of your education. I am morally obligated to clearly define expectations (which I do on a very detailed syllabus), to help you as much as I can before your exams and oral presentations (which I do for each individual and group), and to grade the actual performance using the assessment sheets.

Protesting grades on these grounds are not effective: ignorance about when something is due (that never works-read the syllabus for due dates), ignorance of an assessment item (that never works), different perception of performance (as an outside and experienced observer, I am certainly more objective than the student who self-assesses!), personal problems (must be documented and discussed before an exam or presentation), all the hard work they did (that’s an input, not an output), etc.

I must treat and assess each student the same—fairly and consistently. I cannot make exceptions for some students. All that said, I have great empathy for college students, having been one myself for nine years! I care about your learning. No one would be happier than I to see all students earn high grades!

Attendance Policy:

Attendance is required on two exam days, group project work days, and ALL group project presentations.

Attendance will be taken at the start of each scheduled class on REQUIRED attendance days.

Students must attend all group presentation or students will be required to write essays on missed presentations in order to complete the class.

If a student misses a class, he or she is responsible for the material covered. All lectures are recorded and available in mygateway

CLASS SCHEDULE, READINGS, AND ASSIGNMENTS

Date

Topic/Agenda

Read or Do Prior to Class

Learning

Objectives

Attendance Required?

Thursday,

January 23

Course Overview;

Discussion of Computer Accounts

Read: Why General Managers Need to Actively Participate in Information Technology Decisions

Read: Digital Planet 2010 Executive Summary

Watch webinars (optional):

5800CourseOverviewPARTA.m4v 5800CourseOverviewPARTB.m4v 5800CourseOverviewPARTC.m4v

Understand:

·Why general managers need to participate in IT governance

·IT spend-world, country, firm

·IT-enabled competitive advantage, business process excellence, and cost containment

Yes

Thursday,

January 30

Assign Oral Group Projects;

Building Web Pages

Do: Please print a copy of web pages associated with WWW assignment & instructions prior to class.

Able to develop and deploy:

· Basic html

· Web pages file management

Yes

Thursday,

February 6

IT Technology and Management Trends

Finish Web Pages

Read: Luftman, J., and Derkson, B. (2012), "Key Issues for IT Executives 2012: Doing More with Less" MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 11, 4, pp. 207-218.

Read: Androile, S. (2012), “Seven Indisputable Technology Trends That Will Define 2015,” Communications of the AIS, Vol. 30, 1, Article 4.

Watch Webinars if you do not come to class: ITManagementTrendsPARTA.m4v ITManagementTrendsPARTB.m4v ITManagementTrendsPARTC.m4v ITManagementTrendsPARTD.m4v

Understand:

· IT services performed by IT departments

· Practices for managing IT commodities

· Practices for managing IT differentiators

· Governance practices for Different Types of IT

· IT management concerns

· IT technology trends

NO unless you need inclass help with your webpages;

Else, do readings and listen to webinars on your own

Thursday,

February 13

CLASS WILL NOT MEET

Effects of IT on organizational competitiveness and global economies

Read: Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York, pages, Chapters 1 &2.

Watch: Thomas Friedman speech at MIT: He discusses the first three chapters of his book. The video is 75 minutes long.

Watch: Thomas Friedman : This is a speech by Thomas Friedman at MIT where he discusses The World is Flat 3.0, his 2007 updated version of his 2005 book. It is 40 minutes long.

Understand:

· 10 flatteners from Friedman

· Three eras of Globalization

· Open source software

· Cloud Services, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

· Crowdsourcing

NO (CLASS WILL NOT MEET); Read chapters and Watch videos by the authors;

Thursday,

February 20

In-class

EXAM I

You must take 2 out of 3 exams

Thursday

February 27

Management of Large Scale IT-enabled Business Projects

Read: short except on Project Management from Lacity, M. (editor), (2008), Major Currents in Information Systems: The Management of Information Systems, Volume 4 (series editors: Willcocks, L., and Lee, A.), Sage, London.

Read: Nelson, R., (2007), "IT Project Management: Infamous Failure, Classic Mistakes, and Best Practices," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 6, 2, pp. 67-78.

Read: CHAOS Summary Report

Watch: Dr. Rottman prepared a short webinar recording on the systems development life cycle.

Watch Webinars:

ProjectManagementPartI.m4v

ProjectManagementPartIII.m4v

ProjectManagementPartIV.m4v

Understand:

· Project management best practices

· Change management objectives and practices

· Statistics on project success rates, system features used, size of projects

· Agile vs. Structured Systems Analysis and Design

· Systems Analysis and Design tools, diagrams & approaches

NO (CLASS WILL NOT MEET); Read chapters and Watch Webinars

Thursday March 6

Dr. McBride’s experiment

Organizational Acceptance of Information Technologies

Read the readings and listen to the two webinar lectures

on your own:

Read: Rogers, E.M. (2006), Diffusion of Innovations, New York, Free Press, fourth or fifth edition. Read Chapter 1.

Watch & listen: Webinar Adoption of Innovations I

Read: Swanson, B. (2012), “The Manager’s Guide to IT Innovation Waves,” Sloan Management Review, Vol. 53, 2, pp. 75-83.

Watch & listen: Webinar Adoption of Innovations II

Understand:

· Determinants of Individual Adoption

· Determinants of Organizational Adoption

· Consequences of innovations

· Swanson Wave Model

· Innovation Research biases

COME TO CLASS TO WORK ON GROUP PROJECTS WITH PROFESSOR

Thursday,

March 13

IT Sourcing

Read: Lacity, M. and Willcocks, L. (2013), “Sourcing of Information Technology Services,” The Computing Handbook Set, Information Systems and Information Technology (Volume II)(Heikki Topi, ed.), Article 60.

Read: Rottman, J., and Lacity, M. (2006), “Proven Practices for Effectively Offshoring IT Work,” Sloan Management Review, Vol. 47, 3, pp. 56-63.

Watch Webinars:

ITsourcingPARTA.m4v ITsourcingPARTB.m4v ITsourcingPARTC.m4v

Understand:

· IT sourcing decisions

· determinants of IT sourcing decisions

· outsourcing success rates

· determinants of ITO

· enduring ITO challenges

· important best practices for offshore outsourcing of IT work

NO (CLASS WILL NOT MEET); Read chapters and Watch Webinars

Thursday

March 20

In-class

EXAM II

You must take 2 out of 3 exams

Thursday March 27

No Class Spring Break

In-class

Exam III

You must take 2 out of 3 exams