Background
Teams of four or five students will be formed in the first class session. Teams are for the team project, and also to meet weekly on their own schedule to discuss the assigned case and articles as part of their preparation for the upcoming class.
Using the following outline, submit your team project proposal by the day of Lecture 8. A one-page progress report is due Lecture 9 and Lecture 10. Final presentations will be in class the day of Lecture 11. Write-up of answers to questions about your presentation, and a take-home exam, will be due the day of Lecture 12.
Topic, Team Members
Purpose:
Overall, one-to three sentence statement of what you intend to accomplish with the project you have chosen, why your team chose the topic you did, and how it relates to issues we have discussed in cases in class or that you have read in the readings or expect to discuss or read given the full course syllabus.
Objectives:
Three to five statements of the things that will be done by the project to achieve the Purpose. The objectives set the scope of the project: make clear what is and is not included. For example:
1. To survey the management literature, particularly such journals as HBR and SMR, to see how thinking and advice and frameworks for resolution of the measurement of value topic has evolved and what its current state. (All projects should have a literature search objective, phrased the way you like to fit your topic and particular intention.)
2. To identify and analyze at least two existing written case studies…
OR
2. To identify and interview at least three managers in three different companies.
(etc)
Approach:
Tell what is the methodology and type of research represented, and why that approach is better suited to the purpose and objectives than some other. Match up the approach with your objectives.
Provide the following outline of the summary topics you will use in doing your literature search:
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Full title and reference of the publication piece
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Summary of main ideas
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Evaluation of the piece for this project's purposes
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Extension: how this piece fits with others so far reviewed
These summaries, no longer than one page single-spaced, should become part of the write-up final report, which follows.
1. Scenario Planning
Choose a firm or an entire industry that interests you and that is facing a difficult decision regarding the use of IT in its business. Apply the scenario technique to weigh the possible future states and options for IT facing the firm or the industry. What do you think should be done? Is there evidence to support your recommendation or regarding what was actually done?
2. Starting/Converting to a Digital Business
Examine at least two firms in the same industry that have succeeded, using different approaches to IT (you may choose the airline industry, but not Jet Blue or Delta). Find out as much as you can about how the companies use IT and determine whether or not IT has allowed them to do things that their competitors cannot.
3. Enterprise-Wide Integrated Applications
Enterprise Resource Planning systems, commonly referred to as ERP, are becoming increasingly prevalent in large corporations. However, there is some dispute as to how successful they have been on the whole. Contrast at least two different implementations of ERP's and identify what the critical success factors or reasons for failure were. How are ERP's used differently now that they have been used in the past? Are there some industries where ERP's are more prevalent than others? Why?
4. Project Management
Even the best ideas can fail to take root if project planning and execution are botched. Discuss and compare in detail two business projects involving IT by a company or organization, the obstacles involved, and how managers overcame them. If possible, one of these should be a successful and one a failed project. And what could have been done to make things work. What lessons from the cases you discuss are generally applicable to project management?
5. Change Management
Until recently, change implementations were regarded as largely structural undertakings; managers drew new organization charts and people were expected to report to their new desks. A growing body of literature takes the stance that organizational change involves political and cultural, as well as strategic, challenges. Review the appropriate literature and discuss several instances where the political and cultural aspects of change helped or hindered organizational change.