Maggie & Company

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

Key Issues At NAF, delivering value with IT is about more than delivering projects on time and on budget or having a good IT development shop. They have all this but theres still not enough value getting delivered. This case explores the questions of who is responsible for delivering value with IT and when IT value is delivered. It emphasizes that value delivery should be a business-IT partnership responsibility and will require change in the business over time. The first part of this case looks at the relationship between business strategy and IT development projects. It makes it clear that enterprise business strategies need enterprise solutions and a procedure for matching these. It also introduces the concept that investing in IT

Since the beginning of the book it starts off with her brother fighting in the streets, her father drunk wondering through the streets as well as she was in the street with her brother. When Maggie sees her brother, all beat up she tries to talk to him but makes him upset. Jimmie threatens her that he was going to hit her if she did not shut up and as Maggie continued to talk he smacked her. Their father witnessed it and just told him to stop and leave her in the street. if the father acted different towards her brother beating Maggie things would have been different. As a father, how can he just say leave your sister alone in the street. it showed that he did not care about his kids. When they got home and their parents got in an argument leaving the baby there to witness everything happen it showed how they were abusive towards each other it taught their kids to learn and make them

When evaluating Maggie’s situation, it is important to analyse social support networks in the matter of community connectedness as a protective factor of her health. Many epidemiologists corroborate that a healthy social network relates to positive health, such as reduced rates of depression. (Thompson, Teresa. 2014) Social support can be delivered by family, friends, teachers, social groups and many more. Social support aims to educate through advice, information and resources for a common goal to improve health.

In “Everyday Use”, the youngest daughter Maggie has a desire to keep the family quilts to cherish her family heritage and keep it alive.Maggie respects her black culture

Maggie accepts her heritage. She lives with her mom. Maggie shows that she accepts and involves herself into her heritage most prominently by wanting the quilt their grandmother made. “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! she said. She’d probably be backward enough to put them to use everyday use.” (Walker 64) This shows that Maggie is proud of her heritage. She differs from Dee because she’d rather live like her mom, just like their ancestors before them. I like that Maggie

All stakeholders must understand that by implementing the new IS it will benefit the whole organisation and help in achieving its business strategy

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is about a family’s need for equilibrium within its ranks and within themselves. By examining the writing and story of a family reunion, where the characters symbolize the Freudian tenants of id, ego and superego, it becomes clear that Dee, Mrs. Johnson, and Maggie are unwitting pawns of their psychological dispositions. Through this exploration, each character reveals the hidden motives behind their actions. Their conflicting interactions allow them to resolve the imbalance in the psyche and the family thus demonstrating the human condition outcome.

because she valued it more than Dee. Maggie loved and wanted the quilt because the quilt represent the family history, and because her grandmother made the quilts. Maggie had a deep connection with the quilt, and knows the true meaning of the quilts. Dee only wanted the quilt because of what the quilt was worth. The mother saw that Maggie valued their heritage because of her connection with the quilts, and she saw that it will raise her self-esteem. Therefore, this story is one reason why if a person values their family history it will show their true self identity as a person.

In the market today, business is showing growing interest to partner with IT to make sure they get the value for investing huge in technology. But, still there is a gap between the two departments and the IT folks think that they do not have enough support from the business to ensure the value is realized for the organization. A good example of deep integration of IT and business is the recent firing of the Apple maps chief. The ill-fated Apple maps was the failure of both the IT folks who couldn’t develop an efficient app for maps and also the business who couldn’t gather all the requirements and couldn’t manage the project to achieve the desired output. As a result, the Apple exec Richard Williamson was blamed and fired for the disastrous project and humiliation for the organization.

According to the article, “Avoiding the Alignment trap in information technology”, 75% of IT projects fail to deliver the expected functionality, timing and cost. According to survey results, two major patterns lead to failure of IT: alignment and efficiency. Alignment is the degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business and expends its resources, pursues projects ad provides information consistent with them. This case recognized the following four IT alignment quadrants that companies fall into as followed:

Information Technology (IT) is a foundation for conducting business today. It plays a critical role in increasing productivity of firms and entire nation. It is proven that firms who invested in IT have experienced continued growth in productivity and efficiency. Many companies' survival and even existence without use of IT is unimaginable. IT has become the largest component of capital investment for companies in the United States and many other countries.

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

With the understanding how the direction the organization is going and how IT can begin to improve its own internal processes to meet customer demands, The alignment of IT and business nowadays plays a key ingredient that lead ITIL to success

Frenzel (2004) claimed that to be successful, a firm’s IT management team must take action on the following critical areas: business management issues; strategic and competitive issues; planning and implementation concerns; and operational items. If for any reason, the organisation experiences difficulties in the above areas, the manager will need to set goals and objectives to overcome and prevent these issues.