Chapter 13 Redesigning the Organization with Information Systems 13-1
Chapter 13
Redesigning the Organization with Information Systems
True-False Questions
1. / One problem with information systems development is the difficulty of establishing information requirements, both for individual end users and for the organization as a whole.Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 446
2. / An information system is a sociotechnical entity.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 446
3. / An essential component of the organizational planning process is deciding which new systems to build.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 447
4. / An information systems plan should be decided on before selecting specific projects within the overall context of a strategic plan.
Answer: False Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 447
5. / When developing an information systems plan, the organization is only required to have a basic understanding of its short-term information requirements.
Answer: False Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 447
6. / Business systems planning theory argues that the firm’s information requirements can only be understood by looking at the entire organization to identify key entities and attributes.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 447
7. / The weakness of enterprise analysis is that it produces an enormous amount of data that is expensive to collect and difficult to analyze.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 447
8. / The principle method used in CSF analysis is JAD.
Answer: False Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 449
9. / The strength of the CSF method is that it produces a smaller data set to analyze than the enterprise analysis method.
Answer: True Difficulty: Hard Reference: p. 449
10. / The most common form of IT-enabled organizational change is business process reengineering.
Answer: False Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 451
11. / Paradigm shifts often fail because organizational change is so difficult to orchestrate.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 452
12. / If organizations wait to apply computing power until after they rethink and redesign their business processes, they may obtain large payoffs.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 452
13. / Mortgage banks have achieved remarkable efficiencies by redesigning their approach to mortgage processing.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 453
14. / Before reengineering, management must understand and measure the performance of existing processes as a baseline.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 455
15. / The conventional method of designing systems establishes how information technology can support the processes, and then establishes the information requirements of each business function.
Answer: False Difficulty: Hard Reference: p. 455
16. / The majority of reengineering projects achieve breakthrough gains in business performance.
Answer: False Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 455
17. / TQM derives from concepts developed by American quality experts, but popularized in Japan.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 457
18. / BPR is considered to be more incremental than TQM.
Answer: False Difficulty: Hard Reference: p. 457
19. / The fewer steps in a process, the less time and chance for error to occur.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 457
20. / Improving customer service will improve the quality of the product.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 458
21. / Longer cycles mean that errors are often caught earlier in production.
Answer: False Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 458
22. / The most challenging task of the systems analyst is often defining the information requirements.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 460
23. / User information requirements drive the system-building effort.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 460
24. / The amount of testing time needed for a new system is consistently underrated.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 461
25. / Testing should focus on finding all possible ways to make the program fail.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 462
26. / Improper training and inadequate documentation contribute to system failure.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 463
27. / More than half of all maintenance work consists of changes in data, files, reports, hardware, or system software.
Answer: False Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 463
28. / The systems lifecycle is still used today for large, complex systems projects.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 464
29. / A formal division of labor between end users and IS specialists is part of the systems lifecycle methodology.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 464
30. / The first step in the prototyping model of systems design is to identify the user’s basic requirements.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 465
31. / Iteration is part of prototyping.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 466
32. / Systems wholly created through rapid prototyping may fail when required to accommodate large quantities of data.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 466
33. / If a software package solution is selected, the organization loses some control over the system design process.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 466
34. / When a software package solution is selected, the major design effort will be to mold the user to the package.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 466
35. / An advantage of fourth-generation tools is that they can easily handle processing large numbers of transactions or applications with extensive procedural logic and updating requirements.
Answer: False Difficulty: Hard Reference: p. 467
36. / The role of information centers is diminishing as end users become more computer literate.
Answer: True Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 468
37. / In some forms of outsourcing, a company hires an external vendor to create the software for its system, but operates the system on its own computer.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 469
38. / In the digital firm environment, organizations must be able to add, change, and retire technology capabilities much more rapidly than traditional development methods will allow.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 471
39. / Object-oriented frameworks have been developed to provide reusable, semi-complete applications a company can customize into finished applications.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 472
40. / The middle layer of Web services consists of a service grid to create the environment essential for carrying out essential business activities.
Answer: True Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 476
Multiple Choice Questions
41. / Major risks and uncertainties in systems development occur because:a. it is difficult to establish information requirements on all fronts.
b. time and cost factors are difficult to analyze.
c. managing organizational change is difficult.
d. managerial change cannot always be planned or controlled.
e. All of the above
Answer: e Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 446
42. / The introduction of a new information system involves changes in:
a. jobs.
b. skills.
c. management.
d. the organization.
e. All of the above
Answer: e Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 446
43. / Which of the following is a road map indicating the direction of systems development, the rationale, the current situation, new developments to consider, the management strategy, the implementation plan, and the budget?
a. Project plan
b. Request for proposal
c. Strategic plan
d. Information systems plan
e. Mission statement
Answer: d Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 447
44. / The two principal methodologies for establishing the essential information requirements of the organization as a whole are:
a. enterprise analysis and reengineering.
b. strategic analysis and rationalization of procedures.
c. paradigm shift and business systems planning.
d. enterprise analysis and critical success factors.
e. strategic analysis and paradigm shift.
Answer: d Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 447
45. / A small number of easily identifiable operational goals shaped by the industry, the firm, the manager, and the broader environment that are believed to assure the success of an organization best describes:
a. strategic objectives.
b. management objectives.
c. critical success factors.
d. information plan objectives.
e. information systems objectives.
Answer: c Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 446
46. / ______is a deeper form of organizational change and quickly follows from automation.
a. Reengineering
b. Rationalization of procedures
c. Paradigm shift
d. Work flow management
e. Differentiated processing
Answer: b Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 451
47. / A paradigm shift involves:
a. rethinking the nature of the business itself.
b. rethinking the nature of the information systems process itself.
c. rethinking the nature of the organization itself.
d. Both a and b
e. Both a and c
Answer: e Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 452
48. / The radical redesign of business processes, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive paper-intensive tasks in order to improve cost, quality, and service, and to maximize the benefits of information technology best describes:
a. business process reengineering.
b. paradigm shift.
c. automation.
d. rationalization of procedures.
e. process alignment.
Answer: a Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 452
49. / Workflow and document management software:
a. automates processes involved in routing documents.
b. allows two or more people to work simultaneously on the same document.
c. can affect the content of the document.
d. Both a and b
e. All of the above
Answer: d Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 453
50. / James Champy calls the joint redesign of interorganizational business processes:
a. object-oriented modeling.
b. X-engineering.
c. joint application design.
d. rapid application development.
e. business process reengineering.
Answer: b Difficulty: Hard Reference: p. 455
51. / Information technology can create new design options for various processes because:
a. more tools are available.
b. management understands information technology options.
c. most employees are now computer-literate.
d. it can be used to challenge standing assumptions about work arrangements.
e. fewer people are required to make information technology work.
Answer: d Difficulty: Hard Reference: p. 455
52. / A reengineered business process always affects:
a. jobs.
b. skill requirements.
c. workflows.
d. reporting relationships.
e. All of the above
Answer: e Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 455
53. / A specific measure of quality, representing 3.4 defects per million opportunities best describes:
a. return on investment.
b. activity-based cost.
c. internal rate of return.
d. total quality management.
e. six sigma.
Answer: e Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 457
54. / TQM focuses on:
a. mid-level management.
b. a series of continuous improvements.
c. production employees.
d. eliminating design errors.
e. decreasing cycle times.
Answer: b Difficulty: Easy Reference: p. 457
55. / For benchmarking, companies use:
a. external industry standards.
b. standards set by other companies.
c. internally developed high standards.
d. all of the above.
e. none of the above.
Answer: d Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 458
56. / Dramatic quality improvements in a wide range of manufacturing businesses have been made possible by:
a. CAD.
b. RFP.
c. PDR.
d. benchmarking.
e. workflow management.
Answer: a Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 458
57. / New information systems are an outgrowth of:
a. new IS capabilities.
b. increasing demands on the IS.
c. organizational problem solving.
d. systems development.
e. specific information requirements.
Answer: c Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 459
58. / In the design of a new system, “stakeholders” are:
a. managers who control the information input to the new system.
b. those who have a direct interest in the information affected by the new system.
c. end users who use the reports from the new system.
d. those who will pay for the new system.
e. the entire organization.
Answer: b Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 459
59. / “Who needs what information, where, when, and how” describes the most basic description of:
a. the feasibility study.
b. TQM.
c. information requirements.
d. the systems development process.
e. acceptance testing.
Answer: c Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 460
60. / Systems design:
a. describes what a system should do to meet information requirements.
b. shows how the new system will fulfill the objectives.
c. always tries to increase precision.
d. includes the testing phases.
e. All of the above
Answer: b Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 460
61. / The test plan:
a. includes all the preparations for a series of tests.
b. tests the functioning of the system as a whole in order to determine if discrete modules will function together as planned.
c. tests each program separately.
d. provides the final certification that the system is ready to be used in a production setting.
e. asks end users to evaluate the system.
Answer: a Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 462
62. / Acceptance testing:
a. includes all the preparations for the trials.
b. tests the functioning of the system as a whole in order to determine if discrete modules will function together as planned.
c. tests each program separately.
d. provides the final certification that the system is ready to be used in a production setting.
e. asks end users to evaluate the system.
Answer: d Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 462
63. / Unit testing:
a. includes all the preparations for the series of tests to be performed on the system.
b. tests the functioning of the system as a whole in order to determine if discrete modules will function together as planned.
c. tests each program separately.
d. provides the final certification that the system is ready to be used in a production setting.
e. asks end users to evaluate the system.
Answer: c Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 462
64. / System testing:
a. includes all the preparations for the series of tests to be performed on the system.
b. tests the functioning of the system as a whole in order to determine if discrete modules will function together as planned.
c. tests each program separately.
d. provides the final certification that the system is ready to be used in a production setting.
e. asks end users to evaluate the system.
Answer: b Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 462
65. / In the pilot study conversion strategy, the new system:
a. is tested by an outsourced company.
b. replaces the old one at an appointed time.
c. and the old are run together.
d. is introduced to a limited area until it is proven to work properly.
e. is introduced in stages or parts.
Answer: d Difficulty: Medium Reference: p. 463
66. / In the phased approach conversion strategy, the new system:
a. is tested by an outsourced company.
b. replaces the old one at an appointed time.