Week 12 Questions

Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The triple constraint is three variables- cost, time and scope The variables are interdependent and all projects are limited in some way by these three constraints. Its importance in project management is that it helps to make intelligent trade offs between between time, cost and scope and helps to prevent failure in IT projects.

Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

In project planning the two primary diagrams that are used are:

• PERT chart: which is a Program Evaluation and Review Technique chart and is a graphical network model that depicts a projects tasks and the relationships between those tasks
• Gantt Chart: a simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar

Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success

The three primary areas that a project manager must focus on are:

• People: One of the hardest and most critical tasks a project manager undertakes. Resolving conflicts ithin the team and balancing the needs of the project with the personal and professional needs of the team are two of the challenges facing project managers
• Communications: While many companies develop unique project management frameworks based on familiar project management standards, or adopt specific methodologies al of them agree that communication is the key to excellent project management
• Change: successful organisations and successful people learn to anticipate and react appropriately to change.

Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed

Two reasons why projects fail include:

1. Unrealistic expectations
2. Lack of project management

Two reasons why projects succeed include:

1. Good project charter
2. Good decision making structure

All answers came from Business Driven Information Systems (Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey)

Week 10 Questions

What is your understanding of CRM?

I find that Customer Relationship Management is the focus on improving customer satisfaction and keeping existing clients, as well as getting new clients

Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management

Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day to day front office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers Analytical CRM supports back office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers

Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

The CRM technologies used by marketing departments include:

• List generators: these compile customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns
• Campaign Management systems: guide users through marketing campaigns performing such tasks as campaign definition, planning, scheduling, segmentation and success analysis
• Cross-selling: Selling additional products or services to a customer

The CRM technologies used by sales departments include:

• Sales management CRM systems: these automate each phase of the sales process, helping individual sales representatives co-ordinate and organise all of their accounts
• A contact Management CRM system: maintains customer contact information and identifies prospective customers for future sales
• Opportunity management CRM systems: target sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales

How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

Sales departments were the first to begin developing CRM systems. Sales departments had two primary reasons for to track customer sales information electronically These are:

• sales representatives were struggling with the overwhelming amount of customer account information they were required to maintain and track
• companies were struggling with the issue that much of their vital customer and sales information remained in th heads of their sales representatives

This is how sales departments can uses operational CRM systems

Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business Intelligence refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to and analyse data and information to support decision making efforts. Its important to businesses because it aids them in making decisions for the business and gives them up to date information

Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem

The problem associated with business intelligence is that they are sometimes data rich but information poor. Which means that they have a lot of data but it hasn't been transformed into information yet. The solution to this business problem us supplying the business with the proper tools such as banking, operations management and hardware and software so that they are able to make these decisions properly.

What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

Data mining is the the process of analysing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone. Two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining are quantifiable benefits and up to the minute information for everyone

All answers came from Business Driven Information Systems (Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey)