Survivor Term Paper

Have you ever been driven out of your own home? Have you ever felt like a total outsider? My book The Survivors by Will Weaver is a young adult fiction, written in third-person, about a family who was driven from their home outside Minneapolis, the Newells and is now living in a cabin in the north woods. The main characters, Sarah and Miles, are forced to live like the locals and are not supposed to come off as homeless “Travelers.” They are faced with many challenges that hold them back and also force them to do stuff they don’t want to do.

Information technology has advanced in multiple ways in society, where organizations has implement the structure into their work environment. Industries have outsource their manufacturing to other places in the world and rely on telecommunication to keep the marketing. The geographic distribution has changed significantly by reducing the distance it takes to complete an operation, due to information technology. These are just a couple of examples of how this advanced technology has reshape our society and continuing.

1. Compare and contrast the use of IT in an “information Age” company versus that in an “industrial Age” company? Is Cisco an Information Age company? Why?

Copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of The Adventures of an IT Leader, copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the

The major elements are cost efficiency, eliminating wastes, and researching future IT investments. In the IT Doesn’t Matter article, three main points were outlined, and they were spend less, follow, don’t lead, and focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities. Overspending has always been a major issue in regards to applying new technology, and it is important to execute an IT budget for any organization. Office Depot adopted new technology to improve all of their operations, especially in the supply chain. They were able to increase efficiency, while modernizing their budget. Information technology can benefit any organization if they are researched thoroughly and will improve the business needs of the organization. If it will not improve the business needs, there is no need to invest in expensive technology. The most important phase in the system development life cycle is the systems analysis phase. The goal of this phase is to identify what problems need to be fixed and breaking down how the system will benefit all users. Therefore, the business needs need to be identified and outlined before new technology is adopted into an organization’s business model. Once new technology is applied, organizations must continue to research information technology. If organizations follow these elements of

These types of investments are where I would disagree most with Carr’s viewpoint regarding the commoditization of IT in business. The pure reason for such an IT investment is to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. This can be accomplished in a number of ways starting with the overall infrastructure makeup of the IT, all the way to the capabilities and skills of the IT users. The IT itself can be highly complex and customized for a specialized field, making the barrier to entry for competitors quite high. Conversely, the organization can essentially wed its consumers to the organization by offering a variety of useful services to which they can leverage to make the switching costs to another competitor(s) extremely high. Moreover, having a highly knowledgeable and skilled IT workforce can also increase competitive advantage for the organization by finding new ways to leverage their IT against their competitors which is extremely hard to replicate. One example of this type of system was discussed in the case regarding Cardinal Health. Cardinal Health’s expert knowledge and leveraged use of data warehousing, integrated with SAP R/3, to successfully implement an advanced business intelligence platform created a noticeable competitive advantage within their industry. Going further, it also set precedent for what other competing firms would have to strive for. They did so well, I would

The “IT Doesn’t Matter” article by Nicholas Carr, states an unrealistic view of the importance of IT in today corporate world. Carr tries to explain that due to the vast amount of advances in the technology field, IT has been rendered mundane. He states that IT has become as common place as a telephone or a typewriter before the beginning of the PC age. The article attempts to explains that due to the ability of most people to obtain computer systems that have capabilities that normal users will never need or use makes high end computers unable to provide the advantage that bigger companies once held over smaller ones.

IT (Information Technology) management entails all the routine issues faced by any type of business manager in addition to the issues of software development, technology purchasing (not necessarily physical items), systems integration, the limits of technology and the related budgetary issues. General information literacy is important for any level of IT manager, as he or she needs to communicate successfully using many different modes, media, and technology with all types of IT workers, upper management, and technology product vendors. IT management also entails leadership of projects or departments. Information

We use a single case study methodology to focus on a failed IS project implementation. The study uses grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967; c.f., Charmaz 2013; c.f., Corbin and Strauss 2015) in its focus on principles of emergence by which systematic generation and conceptualization of data provides meaning and relevance to concepts (Glaser and Strauss 1967). In accordance with the recommendations of engaged scholarship by Van de Ven (2007), the project began with the identification of a research problem identified to be relevant to experienced practitioners in leading organizations of IT project management. To develop a base understanding of the challenges experienced in the execution of IT projects, we engaged informally with key industry informants. Observations made in this stage were used to inform the specific research objectives and question put-forth in the Introduction. Specifically, observations were used as data that was conceptualized based on theoretical sensitivity in line with grounded theory (Glaser 1978; Strauss and Corbin 1990). Data complexity was used in the early stages of the research to allow the relevant themes and findings to emerge from the data and to avoid forcing the data to fit existing theories (Urquhart 2013).

IT by itself does not provide any value, however, the alignment of IT to strategic, operational, and cultural objectives provides business value. Thus, the CIO must ensure that any new investment in IT is for the sake of business objectives and not for “IT for ITs sake”. Ensuring business alignment against IT project delivery is critical, must be undertaken for any investment and is the key component of IT value.

A survivor is someone who continues to persevere in spite of opposition, hardship, or setbacks. If someone is a survivor it means they remained alive or barely alive after an event, that can either be major or minor, in which others have died. Survivors go through many trails and trials, they travel over beaten paths just to end up getting judged (both metaphorically and mentally). Some qualities that many survivors have that helped them on their laborious journey are strong family bonds, motivation & determination, being an independent thinker, a long-life learner, perseverance, and the use of their resources. Like Donald Evans, he used his resources and his intuition to help save his family, and his strong family bonds made it easier. Aron Ralston is a great example of a survivor who was an independent thinker and who was determined. Farah Ahmedi was determined and had motivation on her expedition. Alex White persevered through his life or death journey, and Chesley Sullenberger is a long-life learner and because he had that quality he survived a historic event.

Most organizations have a so many factors to consider when prioritizing IT projects. In reality, IT

Nicholas Carr wrote a book about how IT really impacts businesses. The book was written several years ago and this author believes things have changed from that time. His book attempted to change the way some IT managers think about IT. He was talking about wow some value can be created using IT in different ways. The problem in the 1990’s is that IT was beginning to really take off, people were very speculative about the future of IT and what it meant to businesses and the economy. (Carr, N. G. (2003)

In the end, the reasons for inclusion or exclusion of IT management stem from the same cause: the perception of the value of IT. IT management has been negatively perceived as selling a vision for business transformation that is IT myopic. However, when one considers the value of experience and the nature of change of technology, it is essential to have IT management involved as they are the enablers of technology.

In large organizations, all the three domains, projects, programs, and portfolios, have to meet the maturity standards. The IT portfolio plays high-level strategic roles by ensuring that project investments are being managed most appropriately. The main benefit of IT portfolio management is enabling measurement and objective evaluation of IT investments and alignment with the business strategy which will maximize the value of IT investments while minimizing risk. However, the ignoring of the IT portfolio management will impact negatively on the communication and alignment between IT and business leaders, which lead to the wrong distribution of the resources and budgets on projects