IS 5800 Syllabus
Management
of Information Systems
Fall 2010
Course Hours:
Tuesday,
2:00pm to 4:40pm, Room 003 CCB (
Course Instructor:
Dr. Mary C.
Lacity
233
(314) 516-6127 (work)
(314) 516-6827 (fax)
Email:
Mary.Lacity@umsl.edu
Homepage: http://www.umsl.edu/~lacitym
Office Hours: Tuesday 12:30pm to 1:30pm (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 the practices
and tools associated with topics such as the management of IS-based
investment projects, the design and implementation of IS, the alignment of IS
strategy with organizational strategy, information security and privacy, and
gaining a competitive advantage through IS.
Topics covered:
Global
IT spend
Role
of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)
IT-enabled
business processes (i.e., 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
Systems
analysis and design
Managing IT-enabled projects
Management
and utilization of data, information, and knowledge
Enterprise
Resource Planning applications
Open
source software
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
Emergent
technologies (i.e., RFID, blogs, wikipedia)
Course Instructor:
Dr. Lacity is a Professor of Information Systems and an International
Business Fellow at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. 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 12 books, most recently China’s
Emerging Outsourcing Capabilities (Palgrave, 2010; co-editors Leslie
Willcocks and Yingquin Zheng); Information Systems Outsourcing: Theory and
Practice (Palgrave, 2009; coauthor: Leslie P. Willcocks) and Offshore
Outsourcing of IT Work, (Palgrave, 2008; coauthor Joe Rottman). More than
50 of 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 is Senior Editor
of the Journal of Information Technology, Co-editor of the Palgrave
Series: Work, Technology, and Globalization and on the Editorial Boards
for MIS Quarterly Executive, Journal of Strategic Information Systems,
Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal, and Journal of the
Association for Information Systems (JAIS). She is 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.
|
|
Citation |
Chapters
we read and discuss |
|
|
Friedman,
Thomas, The World is Flat, Farrar,
Strauss, and |
Chapters
1 & 2 |
|
|
|
Chapters
1 Available
online at Google books |
|
|
Tapscott, Don, and Williams, A., “Wikinomics: How
Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” Portfolio, Penguin Group, |
Chapter 1 Available online! http://www.wikinomics.com/book/ Click
on link for introduction and Chapter 1 |
You will need access to an HTML guide. Choose
any HTML guide that includes HTML
Extended Color Names and HTML Tag References. Good links on the Internet Include:
http://www.scriptingmaster.com/html/HTML-extended-color-names.asp
HTML extended code
true colors
http://www.htmldog.com/reference/htmltags/
http://www.devx.com/projectcool/Article/19816
Slides should be downloaded and printed by
students prior to class. Slides
will be loaded on MYGATEWAY at least 24 hours before class.
Course Grades:
|
PERCENT
|
REQUIREMENT |
DUE DATE |
|
10% |
Web
Page Assignment |
Monday,
SEPTEMBER 13,
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 |
Tuesday,
Sept 21 in class |
|
20% |
Exam
II |
Tuesday,
October 19 in class |
|
30% |
Oral
Group Presentation |
See
schedule below |
|
20% |
Exam
III |
Tuesday,
December 7 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 the student oral
presentations. The
instructor will email a tentative grade after the oral exams have all been
graded. The student may accept the
tentative grade as the final grade, or may elect to sit for the third
exam. Please let the instructor
know your intentions 48 hours before the third exam.
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 exams will cover
material from the assigned readings, 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 PRIOR TO CLASS
B. Attend all classes
C. Actively participate in class
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 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
How Web Pages will be Graded
Oral Group Presentation:
The class will be divided into 8 groups. Each
group is responsible for presenting a 60 minute presentation to the class. Each
group will be assigned a different IT topic:
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
RESEARCH BASE:
Secondary Resources. Each group should research at least 20 external references such as journal articles, newspapers,
short videos, or relevant websites. Be sure to check high-quality but
non-refereed publications such as the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street
Journal, Economist, etc for relevant articles.
At
least 10 of these references must be from refereed
journals, such as Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, and
MIS Quarterly Executive. Refereed journals assure some level of
validation. The best source to find refereed journal articles is ABI-INFORM,
available online to UMSL students.
To find refereed articles, simply tick the box for “Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed
” while in ABI inform. I will show you how to conduct a
search.
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.primisonline.com/primis/catalog/pcatalog/casebook.htm),
Idea Group Publishing IT Cases (see http://www.igi-global.com/Cases.aspx)
or Case Clearing House (see http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/
or http://www.ecchatbabson.org/)
Many students liven up
their presentations by including short video clips about their topic (such as a
youtube video) or demos of software applications (such as blogging tools). These can be very effective at showing
the audience certain technologies, such as RFID.
Primary Resources. Students should conduct
original case studies. Case studies comprise original interviews and internal
and external company documents, but refer to guidelines for your specific
topic. Most students chose one to three organizations from among the group
members' current or prior workplaces.
We will learn about the “six degrees of
separation”—with a little help and determination, a friend of the
family or a friend of a friend may help students find relevant people to
interview. International students are highly encouraged to interview people
from businesses based in their homelands.
We love learning about businesses from around the world!
Another
potential source of primary data is an original survey. For example, past groups have surveyed
over 140 UMSL students about their open source software usage. Another group surveyed 35 lawyers to see
if they would outsource any legal work.
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? 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? (~10 minutes)
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.
Case-based Data: Explain your topic
using real organizations. Why did
you select these cases? How are
they representative of the lessons you are trying to demonstrate? (~30 minutes)
Generalizations: Do a cross-case
comparison of similarities and differences among the cases. 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. You should incorporate
the audience during the entire presentation. In the past, students have done very
creative things for audience participation including “Name that
Entrepreneur”, a short Jeopardy game, a short survey, etc.
PRESENTATION MATERIALS:
Each group will develop
power point slides.
On the day of your
presentation, please provide a hardcopy of the slides for
your instructor. Please print only 2 slides per page and stable your slides for your instructor.
Please load your final
power point slides in your Group Pages under FILE EXCHANGE. Send your instructor an email when you
are ready for me to make the power point slides available to your class
mates. Your classmates may wish to
print your group’s power point slides prior to class, so please have your
slides finalized the week before your presentation. Please name the final version of your
power point slides exactly as indicated below:
|
Group |
Oral
Presentation File Name File names are case sensitive |
|
eveciof10.pptx |
|
|
Group 2: Business Intelligence |
evebif10.pptx |
|
Group 3: Emerging Technologies: RFID |
everfid10.pptx |
|
Group 4: Green IT |
evegreenf10.pptx |
|
Group 5: IT Security
and Privacy |
evesecuref10.pptx |
|
Group 6: Emerging
Technologies: Corporate Blogs/Social Networks |
eveblogf10.pptx |
|
Group 7: Cloud Computing |
evecloudf10.pptx |
|
Group 8: IT
Entrepreneurs |
eveownf10.pptx |
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, Year, Title, Journal (if appropriate), Volume, Number, and page
numbers. For example:
Book:
Lacity, M., and Willcocks, L. (2001), Global Information Technology
Outsourcing: Search For Business Advantage, John Wiley & Sons,
Journal Article:
Rottman,
J., and Lacity, M. (2008), “A US Client’s Learning from Outsourcing
IT Work Offshore,” Information
Systems Frontiers, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 259-275.
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, M., and Willcocks, L. (2001), Global
Information Technology Outsourcing: Search For Business Advantage, John
Wiley & Sons,
(2)
Rottman, J., and Lacity, M. (2008), “A US Client’s Learning from Outsourcing
IT Work Offshore,” Information
Systems Frontiers, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 259-275.
(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, 2009.
Interviews:
Please indicate name (if not anonymous),
title of interviewee, type of interview (in person, phone, videoconference),
name of students 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, 2009.
Ian Jones, Director of Applications,
BigCompany, interviewed by phone by Jane Doe and Fred Davis, February 8, 2009.
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 take this very seriously and any student
who copies directly from the web or printed sources will be turned over to
Academic Affairs.
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.
Advice for Oral
Group Presentation:
My aim is to have the
best possible group presentations.
Based on vast experience with group assignments, keys to success
include:
·
As
soon as groups are assigned, sit next to each other in class to foster
communication and relationship building.
·
Exchange
contact information.
·
Start
your group project as soon as groups are assigned.
·
Start
exploring your topic by gathering general statistics about your topic and start
answering the questions: 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?
·
Identify
early the original sources of data you want to collect (interviews, case study
material, original surveys)
·
Read
entire syllabus regarding the group project
·
Be
sure to get the best, most current, most relevant sources of content available
·
Frequently
meet with the professor before or after class
·
Frequently
meet with each other
·
Treat
each group member with respect. You
will likely be in groups with individuals from different countries and
cultures. View the diversity as an
opportunity to learn about how to work with people from different cultures.
Appreciate that individuals have worthwhile and unique viewpoints and talents
that will enrich the group’s performance.
·
Please do not complain to the professor about group
members behind their backs. Your complaints reflect more on you than on
the individual you are complaining about.
If a problem arises, find a way to discuss the problem directly with the
individual. If a serious problem
arises that you have not been able to successfully address with the individual,
then make an appointment with me and the entire group with the sole purpose of
finding a successful route forward.
·
Have
content completed one week prior to presentation.
·
DO
NOT HAVE MORE THAN 60 POWER POINT SLIDES (excluding references).
·
Meet
with the professor one week prior to review power point slides.
·
Meet
with group to practice oral presentation (this is the only way to get the
timing correct!)
·
When
speaking in the front of the class, do not use notes. Your power point slides serve as your
notes.
·
When
speaking in front of the class, speak LOUDLY enough for the back row to hear you
clearly.
·
When
speaking in the front of the class, do not stand behind the instructor’s
computer station. Stand in front of
the class.
·
When
speaking in front of the class, all group members should be standing in the speaking
space, with one person advancing the slides.
·
The
best presentations pass control many times among group members. You should not organize the speaking as
five 10-minute, independent speeches.
The presentation should be integrated
so that every person speaks several times.
·
To
form a cohesive group, do not think that an individual “owns” a
certain part of a presentation. It
is quite natural for one member to gather data and another member may actually
present the data.
·
The
audience gets tired and cannot absorb too much information at one time. Groups are more effective when
they deliver less information in a relaxed, effective manner rather than trying
to rush through too much information. Usually, as the group presentation
approaches, groups realize they have too much information! The group should keep the best
content. No individual should feel
bad if the information they collected is not all used. Again, each member needs to abandon the
idea that they “own” content.
The content is group owned.
·
During
practice sessions, help group mates with their oral communication skills. It does not matter if English is not
your native language! Hundreds of
international students have performed well on their oral presentations. What
matters is that students can be heard (good volume), that students do not read
from notes, that students connect with the audience by asking good questions,
that students stand in front of the audience (not behind the instructor
station), that students are enthusiastic, that students have prepared excellent
content, and that students have practiced out loud with their groups.
·
Remember to have about 10 minutes of audience interaction during the presentation. Do not rely on
“Does anyone have any questions?” to fill up your ten minutes of
class participation. In the
past, students have done very creative things for audience participation
including “Name that Entrepreneur”, a short Jeopardy game, a short
survey, etc.
·
BE SURE TO SEE HOW I
GRADE THE ORAL PRESENTATIONS: oral group grade
form
I want you all to succeed! Please follow my advice!
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
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, and as a professor I cannot
possibly hold this view. 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 group), and to grade the actual performance
using the assessment sheets.
Students can get very
crafty and start protesting their grades on many grounds: ignorance about when
something is due (that never works), 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 will be
taken at the start of each class, with the exception of the two days using
experimental delivery methods (see course schedule below).
I understand that
many students have competing life priorities including work, business travel,
and family. For this reason,
students may have two excused absences during the semester EXCEPT ON AN EXAM DAY
OR THE DAY OF YOUR SCHEDULED ORAL PRESENTATION.
If a student misses a
class, he or she is responsible for the material covered. Ask a classmate or
group member to tape record or even video record the class--I have no problem
with the use of recording devices.
CLASS SCHEDULE, READINGS,
AND ASSIGNMENTS
|
Date |
Topic/Agenda |
Read or
Do Prior to Class |
Tuesday,
August 24
|
Course Overview; Discussion
of Computer Accounts |
|
|
Read: Digital Planet 2008 Executive Summary |
||
Tuesday,
August 31 |
Assign
Oral Group Projects; Building
Web Pages |
Do: Please print a copy
of web pages associated with WWW assignment & instructions prior to class. |
Read
chapters and Watch videos by the authors;
Tuesday,
September 7;
CLASS WILL NOT MEET
|
Effects
of IT on organizational
competitiveness and global economies |
Read: Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, Farrar, Strauss, and |
|
Watch: Thomas
Friedman speech
at MIT: He discusses the first three chapters of his book. The video is 75
minutes long. |
||
|
Read: Tapscott, Don, and
Williams, A., “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes
Everything,” Portfolio, Penguin Group, |
||
|
Watch: Don Tapscott video—this is
about a nine minute video on Wikinomics. |
||
Tuesday,
September 14
|
Managing
IT within Organizations |
Read: Weill, P., "Don't Just Lead: Govern:
How Top Performing Firms Govern IT," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol,
3, 1, March 2004, pp. 1-17. |
|
Read: Luftman, J., and Ben-Zvi, T., "Key
Issues for IT Executives: Difficult Impact on IT" MIS Quarterly
Executive, Vol. 9, 1, 2010, pp. 49-59. |
||
|
Do: Please print a copy
of class overheads |
||
Tuesday,
September
21
|
EXAM I |
|
|
Tuesday September
28 |
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 in the six volume
series (series editors: Willcocks, L., and Lee, A.), Sage, London. |
|
Read: Nelson, R., "IT
Project Management: Infamous Failure, Classic Mistakes, and Best Practices," MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 6, 2,
September 2007, pp. 67-78. |
||
|
Read: 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. |
||
|
Read: CHAOS Summary Report |
||
|
Listen to: Dr. Rottman prepared a short wimba recording
on the systems development life cycle. |
||
|
Optional |
||
|
Do: Please print class
overheads |
||
EXPERIEMENTAL
DELIVERY:
Read the readings and listen to the two wimba lectures
Tuesday,
October 5
STUDENTS
SHOULD COME TO CLASS TO WORK ON GROUP PROJECTS
|
Organizational Acceptance of Information
Technologies |
Read: |
|
Watch & listen:
wimba Adoption of Innovations: Part I |
||
|
Read:
Jeyaraj, A., Rottman, J., and Lacity, M., “A Review of the Predictors,
Linkages, and Biases in IT Innovation Adoption Research,” Journal of Information Technology,
Vol. 21, 1, 2006, pp. 1-23. (Note: This is a very
academic article and you might decide to read after the wimba lecture.) |
||
|
Watch & listen:
wimba Adoption of Innovations: Part II |
||
|
Tuesday, October 12 |
IS Sourcing Issues:
Domestic and Offshore Sourcing |
Read: Lacity, M., Khan,
S., and Willcocks, L. (2009), “A Review of the IT Outsourcing
Literature: Insights for Practice,” Journal
of Strategic Information Systems, Vol 18, pp.130-146. |
|
Read: Rottman, J., and
Lacity, M. (2006), “Proven Practices for Effectively Offshoring IT Work,”
Sloan Management Review, Vol. 47, 3, pp. 56-63. |
||
|
Do: Please print a copy
of the overheads |
||
Tuesday
October 19
|
EXAM II |
|
Tuesday,
October 26 |
WORK WITH GROUPS ON GROUP PRESENTATION |
Professor to review slides for groups 1 and 2 before or
after exam |
Tuesday,
November 2
|
Group
1: The role of the CIO Group
2: Business Intelligence |
Professor to review slides for groups 3 and 4 before or
after class |
Tuesday,
November 9 |
Group
3: RFID Group 4: Green IT |
Professor to review slides for groups 5 and 6 before or
after class |
Tuesday,
November
16
|
Group
5: IT Security and Privacy Group
6: Corporate Blogs/Corporate uses of Social Networks |
Professor to review slides for groups 7 and 8 before or
after class |
Tuesday
November
23
|
NO
CLASS FALL BREAK |
|
Tuesday,
November
30
|
Group 7: Cloud
Computing Group
8: IT Entrepreneurs |
|
Tuesday,
December 7
|
EXAM III |
|