MIS Chapter 13 I 14
Mastering IT-Business Alignment Quiz
Test your knowledge on the crucial relationship between IT and business strategies with our engaging quiz! Dive deep into topics such as outsourcing, competitive advantage, and the role of CIOs in aligning technology with business goals.
Key Features:
- 82 carefully crafted questions
- Multiple choice format for ease of answering
- Ideal for students, professionals, and anyone interested in IT strategy
Which of the following does not describe business and IT strategic alignment?
The alignment of IT and business is the number-one issue facing many CIOs.
Many IT initiatives have failed because they were not aligned to the business strategy.
Most companies initiate the simple process of IT alignment.
If IT is not properly aligned with the organization’s strategy, then large investments in ISs may have a low payoff.
IT-business alignment can be fostered by focusing on activities central to alignment. Which of the following is not one of those activities?
The CIO is a focused, narrow technologist.
Senior managers are committed to deploying IT to assure company success.
The CIO is a member of senior management.
The CIO understands and buys into the corporate culture and has good communication skills.
What is the main challenge to achieving IT-business alignment?
Getting end-users involved in projects to support business tactics.
The CIO attaining strategic influence.
Identifying a link between business and IT plans.
Getting cross-functional cooperation among middle level managers.
When enterprise-wide IT projects so overwhelm the workload of the IS group that there is insufficient time for communication with members of the business units, it damages IS-business alignment because:
Business solutions cannot be optimized
The enterprise is over-committed.
The IS group is viewed as an order taker rather than as a partner with whom to build solutions.
The IS budget is too limited
IT can add value to a company directly by:
Reducing the workforce while not reducing the production level.
Widening the geographic market.
Providing a competitive advantage through improved customer service
Reducing competition based on price.
Which of the following is not a characteristic of resources that give firms the potential to create a competitive advantage?
Appropriability
Cost leadership
Rarity
Value
Southwest Airlines relies on IT to be a low-cost airline. Southwest’s competitive strategy is sustainable under which of the following conditions?
The IT must generate additional revenues that exceed the cost of the IT.
The IT must generate first-mover advantage.
Other airlines do not fly the same routes.
There are no software upgrades.
The ________ is a business leader who uses IT as a core tool to leverage IT to add value and gain a competitive advantage.
End-user
Business technologist
Director of operations
Strategic CIO
The focus of IT strategy is on:
Building a sustainable, low cost IT infrastructure
Implementing cutting-edge technology
How IT creates business value
Building mobile capabilities
_________ is a group of managers and staff representing various organizational units that is set up to establish IT priorities and to ensure that the IS department is meeting the needs of the enterprise.
Advisory council
Board of directors
Corporate steering committee
Senior management
The success of IT steering committees largely depends on _______________, which is a formal set of statements and policies for IT alignment, level of acceptable risk, and allocation of resources.
An IT tactical plan
An application portfolio
IT governance
IT imitability
Most IT strategic planning methodologies start with:
An investigation of the industry, competition, and competitiveness
An inventory of applications and databases
A review of newly developed IT tools
Interviews with managers who depend on IT to perform their jobs
Which is not a characteristic of critical success factors (CSF)?
The CSF approach to IT planning helps identify the information needs of managers.
CSFs remain constant after they have been agreed upon.
CSFs exist in business units, departments, and at the organizational level
CSFs vary by broad industry categories, such as manufacturing, service, or government.
For firms in the same industry, critical success factors (CSFs) will vary depending on each of the following except:
Whether the firms are market leaders or weaker competitors
Location of the firms
what competitive strategies they follow
Their IT architectures
__________ is an approach used in planning situations which involve a lot of uncertainty, such as e-commerce planning.
Critical success factors
Resource allocation
Scenario planning
Regression analysis
Which is not a key factor in getting and keeping IT aligned with the organization?
The CIO having strong relationships with other senior executives.
Treating end-users as customers.
The IS department having good relationships with end-user departments.
Introducing new IT as a competitive weapon.
Which is not an effective way to improve the relationship between the IT department and end-users?
Having end users from key business units on steering committees.
Providing end users with the latest technologies.
Creating information centers.
Using service-level agreements.
_________ is contracting work to be completed by an outside vendor.
Temping
Offshoring
Outsourcing
Sourcing
Major reasons for outsourcing by large U.S. Companies include all of the following except:
Desire to focus on core competency
Cost reduction
Improve quality
Develop unique capabilities
Which of the following is not a characteristic of outsourcing?
There are many hidden costs.
The use of IT outsourcing continues to decrease.
The failure rate of outsourcing relationships remains high, with estimates ranging from 40 to 70 percent.
A majority of companies surveyed reported having negative experiences with outsourcing.
Which of the following is not a major risk to consider when deciding whether to outsource?
Higher developmental or operational costs than anticipated
Exceeding the time anticipated for development or transition
inability to provide the expected service levels at implementation
Inability to sustain the competitive advantage
The trend toward offshore outsourcing is primarily due to all of the following except:
global markets
Lower costs
Skilled labor
Security concerns
A popular model in which computing resources are made available over a network to the user when resources are needed is:
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Grid computing
Application services provider (ASP)
Enterprise resource planning
Networks can be used to support the concept of __________ in which the unused processing cycles of all computers in a given network can be harnessed to create powerful computing capabilities.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Grid computing
Application services provider (ASP)
Enterprise resource planning
All of the following are characteristics of open source software except:
Open source software is typically less reliable than proprietary software.
It is a development method for software which allows users to modify the source code, enabling integration in different computing systems.
It may allow hackers to know about the weaknesses or loopholes of the software more easily than closed-source software.
Open source code is becoming a corporate building block.
A study of chief information officers (CIOs) sponsored by the Society for Information Management found that one of the top issues facing CIOs was the alignment of IT and business.
True
False
Despite the importance of IT alignment, organizations continue to demonstrate limited actual alignment.
True
False
The main challenge to achieving IT-business alignment is for the CIO to secure the necessary budget and other resources.
True
False
Resources must be valuable, rare, and generate net increases in revenues in order to be able to create competitive advantages.
True
False
It is typical for a traditional CIO to routinely work with business leaders to work on their strategy and translate it into action.
True
False
The corporate steering committee is a group of IT managers that is set up to establish IT priorities and to ensure that the IS department is meeting the needs of the enterprise.
True
False
Business service management is an approach for linking key performance indicators (KPIs) of IT to business goals to determine the impact on the business
True
False
American Airlines’ reservation system, SABRE and Caterpillar’s equipment maintenance system are examples of strategic competitive systems. A drawback of these systems is that they are expensive and easy to duplicate.
True
False
The business systems planning (BSP) model was developed by IBM, and is a top-down approach for IT planning that starts with business strategies.
True
False
Critical success factors are those ten to twenty key factors that, if done well, will result in the organization’s success.
True
False
The critical success factors approach encourages managers to identify what is most important to their performance and then develop good indicators of performance in these areas.
True
False
One important reason to do scenario planning is to ensure that companies focus on catastrophes and not only opportunities.
True
False
One type of scenario planning involves creating customer scenarios. Creating customer scenarios helps the company better fit the products and services into the real lives of the customers, resulting in sales expansion and customer loyalty.
True
False
Resource allocation is a harmonious process in most organizations during which high-payoff projects are identified and budgeted.
True
False
Transactional outsourcing agreements, in which a company outsources discrete processes that have well-defined business rules, have a lower success rate than strategic partnerships, in which a single outsourcer takes responsibility for the majority of a client company’s IT services.
True
False
Some experts believe that all software will eventually become a service and be sold as a utility
True
False
Which of the following is not an element of the technology adoption process?
The communication channels used by potential adopters
The relative advantage of the technology
The social system into which the technology is introduced
The speed of adoption
A(n) _________ is the person who promotes the benefits of a new information system on an ongoing basis and across different levels of the organization.
Adopter
Champion
CFO
Entrepreneur
Apple’s launch of the iPhone generated significant press and interest. This launch is an example of a:
hype cycle
Priority matrix
Slope of enlightenment
Technology trigger
Categories of technology adopters include each of the following except:
Innovators
Laggards
Movers
Late majority
Which of the follow is not a distinguishing characteristic of innovators?
Slightly above average in age experience
Generally high financial status
Risk takers
Well educated
Compared to other types of IT adopters, _________ tend to be risk averse and pay little attention to the opinions of others.
Late majority
Laggards
Early majority
Non-adopters
When a company implements a new information system, typically there is a(n):
Change in the way business is conducted.
change in IT infrastructure
Increase in competitive advantage
decrease in accountability
Data centers, networks, data warehouses, and corporate knowledge bases are examples of ___________ because they provide an IT foundation for the enterprise.
Cross-functional applications
IT applications
IT infrastructure
System implementations
Which statement about research organizations is not true?
Research organizations produce numerous reports that are useful to managers in assessing suitable technologies for IT-based systems.
Gartner, Inc. and Forrester publish informative articles that assess the current status of different technologies.
Gartner, Inc. and Forrester are widely respected research firms with low cost subscriptions and subscribers from a majority of organizations
Forrester hosts an IT Forum annually to inform and educate IT professionals about newly emerging technologies and IT methodologies.
The process of implementing a new information system is:
scheduled to coincide with the beginning or ending of the fiscal year.
Complex
Best done by the end-users
done using the parallel approach.
When an information system will be implemented at numerous business units at various locations, the most appropriate implementation approach to minimize user resistance and maximize user confidence is the _____________ approach.
Parallel
Phased
Plunge
Pilot
When an information system consists of several modules that are tested as they are developed, the appropriate implementation strategy is the _____________ approach, which can be used along with other approaches.
Parallel
Phased
Pilot
Plunge
When the primary objective is to minimize risk during the implementation of a new information system regardless of transition costs, the most appropriate implementation strategy is the _____________ approach
Parallel
Phased
Pilot
Plunge
When the primary objective is to minimize transition costs during the implementation of a new information system regardless of risk, the most appropriate implementation strategy is the _____________ approach.
Parallel
Phased
Pilot
Plunge
It is estimated that ____________ of IT-based projects fail.
10 to 25%
25 to 33%
30 to 70%
Over 75%
IT-implementation success and failure is influenced by each of the following factors except:
Level of risk
User acceptance
User support
User training
__________ involves the use of information technologies and tools to model, measure, manage, and improve core business processes enabling companies to be more competitive and better serve customers.
Business process management
Business process engineering
Business activity monitoring
Workflow management
Formerly, it took IBM Credit Corporation from 6 days to two weeks to issue credit to a customer. Often they would lose customers during the lengthy approval process. Today, the process takes only minutes or hours. This change is an example of:
Business process management
Business process reengineering
Business activity monitoring
Workflow management
To put an effective business process management (BPM) strategy into place, it is critical that companies focus strongly on:
Prospective and current customers
How operations are performed
People who perform the operations
Desired outcomes
A business process model is:
A snapshot of processes within a specific time period.
A draft of inefficient processes to be eliminated.
Similar to an income statement in that it looks at the entire organization over a long period of time.
Similar to an income statement in that it looks at the entire organization over a long period of time.
_________ is a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects, defined as unacceptable deviation from the mean or target, and to systematically work toward managing variation to prevent those defects.
Total quality management (TQM)
Total quality management (TQM)
The PDCA Cycle
Six Sigma
In the vast majority of cases, the problems that occur when introducing new systems into an organization are due to:
The complexity of the technology.
Hardware or software malfunction.
People having to relate to others and work in ways that conflict with their basic values.
Insufficient tech support.
All of the following describe change management issues arising from an IS implementation except:
The problems with people can be resolved with training sessions for those who want to take them.
Problems with hardware and software usually can be fixed by redesign, integration or upgrade.
Disgruntled people can be constant threats to the success of any project that involves change.
The origins for resistance to system implementation can often be attributed to the redistribution of power.
What is the sequence of stages of Lewin’s three-stage change model?
Negotiating, unfreezing, changing
Acceptance, transition, change
Unfreezing, change, (re)freezing
Bargaining, compromising, agreeing
Which of the following is not one of the ten principles of change management?
Address the ‘human side’ of change systematically
Start with the end-users
Involve every layer or level of the organizations
Involve every layer or level of the organizations
The IT adoption process is a linear process consisting of five stages, which ends with the decision stage that leads to adoption or rejection of the innovation.
True
False
Approximately 50 percent of the general population is slow to adopt new technology
True
False
Age, gender and education are important individual differences that influence when certain individuals will adopt new technology and how easily they will accept the associated changes.
True
False
The successful adoption and implementation of an information system depends on the proper assessment of numerous individual, technology, task, organizational, and environmental factors
True
False
The first step in adopting a new IT-based system is to identify the technologies that competitors have adopted and the cost of those technologies.
True
False
Gartner’s Emerging Hype Cycle has five stages that reflect the basic IT adoption path starting with a trigger point, through overblown hype, and then enduring disillusionment, before finally becoming mainstream and accepted.
True
False
IT infrastructures consist of the systems and programs for achieving specific objectives, such as payroll processing or order fulfillment.
True
False
An appropriate implementation approach for mission critical information systems is the plunge approach
True
False
Top management support is as important in IT implementation as it is in IT adoption.
True
False
The major factors determining the risk of IT projects are project size, organization size, and complexity of the implementation effort.
True
False
When users have the opportunity to provide input into the design and development of an IS, they are more inclined to buy-in to the system and less likely to resist it.
True
False
The activities of business process management consist of designing, analyzing, implementing, managing, and optimizing a process for both effectiveness and efficiency.
True
False
Companies will not achieve significant productivity improvements from business process management (BPM) if bottlenecks within the processes are not corrected.
True
False
If organizations focus exclusively on automation and cost savings when managing business processes, they can achieve significant operational efficiencies and a competitive edge.
True
False
When faced with potential changes in organizational power from the implementation of a new IS, stakeholders tend to either consciously or unconsciously resist the implementation by delaying, sabotaging or insisting on the modification of system development.
True
False
To minimize employees’ panic that could lead to resistance to a new and vital IS, communication about the system should be on a need to know basis until the time of implementation.
True
False
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