Chapter 2

Question 1

Three main forces interacting to shape organizations

Answer 1

1. Levels of management
2. Design of organisations
3. Organisational cultures

Question 2

Levels of management across organization

Answer 2

1. Operations (day to day)
2. Middle management (longer term)
3. Strategic management (longest term)

Question 3

What is a system?

Answer 3

An interrelated set of objects that communicate to achieve a common goal

Question 4

How are organizations comparable with systems?

Answer 4

• Organizations accomplish predetermined goals and objectives like systems
• Composed of smaller, interrelated systems that serve specialized functions
• Specialized functions reintegrate to form effective organizational whole

Question 5

Relationship between systems and subsystems

Answer 5

• Systems and subsystems are interrelated and interdependent
• All systems process inputs from their environments
• Systems are contained by boundaries
• An ideal system self corrects or self regulates

Question 6

Factors of organizational environments

Answer 6

1. Community
   - Physical location
   - Demographic profile
2. Economic
   - Market factors
   - Competition
3. Political
   - State and local government
4. Legal
   - Laws

Question 7

What is a virtual organization?

Answer 7

• An organization that has parts of the organization in different physical locations
• Allows employees to fulfil familial obligations
• Reduces costs of physical locations
• More rapid response to customer needs

Question 8

What is taking a systems perspective?

Answer 8

• Allows analyst to understand businesses that they will come into contact with
• Important for members of subsystems to realize that they are interrelated with
  other subystems
• Problems occur when managers think their department is the most important

Question 9

Donut principle

Answer 9

Look at big picture “whole” then focus on detail “hole”

Question 10

What is ERP?

Answer 10

• Enterprise resource planning
• Integrated organizational information system
• Software that helps the flow of information between functional areas in
  organization
  –> Integrates all departments and functions throughout the organization into a single IT system so that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprise wide information about all business operations

Question 11

What is a context-level data flow diagram?

Answer 11

• Focus is on the data flowing into and out of the system and the processing of the data
• Shows external entities and one process (PROCESS 0)

Question 12

What is use case modelling?

Answer 12

• part of UML
• describes what a system does without describing how the system works
• view of systems requirements

Question 13

What is included in a use case diagram?

Answer 13

1. Actor
   - Particular role of a user of the system
   - Exist outside of the system
   - Primary actor: Supply data or receive information from the system
   - Supporting actor: Help to keep the system running or provide help
2. Use case symbols
   - Oval indicating task of use case
3. Connecting lines
   - Arrows and lines used to show relationships

Question 14

What three things does a use case always provide?

Answer 14

1. Actor that initiates event
2. Event that triggers a use case
3. Use case that performs the actions triggered by the events

Question 15

Different relations in use case diagrams

Answer 15

1. Behavioural relationships
   - Communication
   - Connects actor to use case  2. Includes relationships
   - Describes situation in which one use case posses the behaviour that allows the new use case to handle a variation or exception from the basic use case
2. Generalizes
   - Implies that one thing is more typical than another thing

Question 16

What is a scope?

Answer 16

• System scope defines the system boundaries
• Actors are always outside of the scope
• Communication lines are the boundaries and define the scope

Question 17

Steps to develop use case diagrams

Answer 17

1. Review business specifications
2. Identify actors
3. Identify high level events
4. develop primary use cases that describe high level events and how the actors initiate them
5. review each primary use case to determine variations of flow through it

Question 18

Decisions and data in STRATEGIC management level

Answer 18

Decisions
- set goals/strategies
- heuristic
- uncertain
- semi-structure problems
- one time decisions
Data
- Broad
- Long term
- Unstructured
- Volatile
- Unpredictable

Question 19

Decisions and data in MIDDLE management level

Answer 19

Decisions
- Assemble resources
- Partly strategic
- Partly operational
Data
- Internal oriented
- Past, present and
future

Question 20

Decisions and data in OPERATIONAL management level

Answer 20

Decisions
- Executive tasks
- Analytic
- Structured problems
- Repetitive decisions
Data
- Short term
- Structured
- Stable
- Predictable

Question 21

What is collaborative design?

Answer 21

• External and internal stakeholders follow processes to share in designing a system
• Giving power to those who have a technical or strategic expertise