2. What planning methods would you use to develop e-business
and e-commerce strategies and applications for your own business? Explain your
choices.

3. Why has prototyping become a popular way to develop
business applications? What are prototyping’s advantages and disadvantages?

4. What are the three most important factors you would use
in evaluating computer hardware? Computer software? Explain why.

5. The IT function is notorious for being dynamic, and its
leaders are no exception. Go online to research recent trends affecting the
traditional roles of senior IT executives and how these roles are changing.
Show your findings.

6. “In the future, the prevalence of IT in product offerings
will blur the distinction between IT and other areas of the company, to the
extent that the IT function will cease to exist as a separate entity.” Do
you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?

7. The scrum approach to project management has become quite
popular in recent years. Go online and research other companies that are using
it to organize their projects. Have those experiences been positive as well?
what can you tell about how the approach works from the research? Summarize.

8. Would issues with IT projects be solved by making a
business executive the ead of any projects involving IT?

9. If virtualization technology were to eventually allow end
users to run any environment of their choice in the same device, does that mean
the choice of computing platform (desktop, notebook, smartphone, windows,
Linux, mac OS) becomes irrelevant?

10. Why are ERP upgrades so complex and expensive? What role
does ERP customization, if any, play in this process? Go online and research
other examples discussing ERP upgrades. Can you discern a pattern in what seems
to be the major cost drivers of the upgrade process?

11. Place yourself in as a customer while an upgrade was
being implemented. What, if anything, would you have done differently had the
companies had told you that a major software upgrade would be happening soon?
Should they have told you?