Return to main page

Chapter 12 Exercises

Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Principles of MIS

© 2008 by Jerry Post
  1. Interview a local manager to determine the requirements for a new system. Explain which method would be the best approach to develop the system. Estimate how long it would take to complete the project and how much it would cost. Advanced option: Illustrate the new system with a data flow or object-oriented diagram. More advanced: Create the system.
  2. Create a Web page form with 5 text boxes and add Javascript code to check that each box is not empty when the form is submitted.
  3. Find a small example of a business or Web program, choose a function or subroutine and explain its purpose.
  4. A regional bank office generates loans for builders. The office has several bankers who form alliances with regional builders and negotiate loans and other services. The manager wants a system to track the leads, including the potential amount of the loan and the probability of the loan going through. Every month, the main office sends a spreadsheet file with current loan information. The manager and the main office want the regional bank officers to project the amount of money that will be loaned in the coming months. The manager wants a system to help collect and track this data. Identify the best development methodology. Assuming no one in the regional office has the skills to create the application, do some research to find at least two firms that could handle the job for a reasonable price.
  5. Your friend is working with a local group that helps find homes for animals—mostly cats and dogs. People who adopt the pets pay a fee to adopt the animal and all animals are spayed or neutered to help reduce the breeding population. The adopters receive a discount if they use one of the vets who work with the organization. The organization also collects money through a variety of donations, such as donation jars are local stores, and the occasional fund raiser. Some people donate larger sums of money, but these are usually handled directly by the management committee. Your friend handles the accounting for the organization and wants to simplify some of the process. One problem has been the weekly clinics and small donations. Fortunately, the organization has many volunteers, but whenever they collect money, they have to drop it off with your friend, who counts it, fills out bank deposit tickets, takes the money to the bank, and records it in the accounting system. The process takes quite a bit of your friend’s time, and sometimes it takes a while for the volunteers to travel to your friend’s house to drop off the receipts. You suggested that perhaps the volunteers could drop off the money directly at one of the many bank branches. Then the money gets deposited immediately. Your friend says she still needs to track all of the data, so you suggested that the volunteers could take the receipt from the bank and put the data into a Web site. Create a design for this application.
  6. For each of the following information system projects, identify the development method that would be the best approach for most companies.
    1. A system to record and track shipments of products to regional distributors.
    2. A system for an airline to analyze customer complaints.
    3. A Web site for sports enthusiasts (bicycles, skiers, and so on) to swap toys online.
    4. Electronic forms for employees to submit lunch requests for monthly meetings.
    5. A government system to analyze violation reports filed online with the Do Not Call Web site.
    6. A relatively generic Web site for education and training, where instructors upload content and the system displays it and handles online interaction and testing.
    7. A system to track shipments through all ports, monitoring for potential security problems.
    8. A system for medical researchers to evaluate various procedures and drug regimens used in hospital applications.
  7. Assume that you are on a project to build a new Web site for a midsize company. The firm sells materials to home builders—usually contractors, but some individual sales as well. The company wants to take orders over the Web and enable customers to track the status of current orders. Contractors also want the ability to look at old orders when placing new ones. For example, if they build the same style of house twice, they will need approximately the same materials. The manufacturer is not completely certain on many of the details yet, and you will have to interview customers to get additional details and feedback. Set up a schedule for developing this system using the SDLC approach. Then, identify ways that RAD might be used to reduce the overall development time.
  8. You work for a company that is increasingly asking employees to develop their own applications using Microsoft Office tools connected to the corporate database. This process has not been working very well, and employees are grumbling. But the company has decided it cannot afford to hire all of the MIS people that would be needed to develop all applications and reports within the MIS department. How can the company improve the process? What tools and capabilities should the company add?

    9. Toolbox logoTechnology Toolbox

  9. Write a short macro program in Excel that adds all of the numbers between the values in cell A1 and cell A2 and puts the result in cell A5. For example, if A1 = 1 and A2 = 5, then add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 to get 15. Hint: You can read or write to a cell with the command Range(“A1”).
  10. Write an Excel macro that looks at each item selected to see if any cells are blank. If any are blank, display a message notifying the user how many blank cells there are. (Hint: Use the IsEmpty function to test and the MsgBox command to display a message.)
  11. Create a form in Microsoft Access (or Visual Studio). Place text boxes on the form for amount to borrow, interest rate, and number of months. Add a fourth text box to hold the resulting payment amount. Set the properties to format and name each of the boxes. Add a button to calculate and display the payment amount based on the entered data. Use the Pmt function to do the calculation.
  12. Use InfoPath to create and publish the expense report form. If possible, save it to a SharePoint server. Enter sample data and save and submit the form. E-mail it to your instructor as your supervisor.
  13. Talk with a manager or employee to identify internal forms and data that are collected. Make a list of at least 5 forms for a business that could benefit by using InfoPath.

    14. Teamwork logoTeamwork

  14. Interview computer users to determine how they feel about their current system. Do they like it? What are the major advantages and drawbacks? How long have they used it? When was it changed last? Are there changes users want to see? Are they willing to accept changes? How are relations with the MIS workers? Who initiates changes, users or MIS? If users proposed a new project, how long would it take for MIS to get to it (how long is the backlog)? Each team member should interview a different person (some users, some in MIS). Combine your results to get a picture of the entire company. Do users agree with each other? Does the MIS department agree with the users? Do they see the same problems? (Hint: If you do not have access to another company, you can always find computer users in the university.)
  15. Choose one person in the team who has an interesting job. Create a data flow diagram for the job and organization. Be sure to label everything and provide a data dictionary.
  16. Find a manager who needs a computer project completed or updated. Interview the person and record the comments and notes. Create a basic design for the system. Identify the best methodology to create the system. If possible, find someone to build the system.
  17. Rolling Thunder Bicycles wants to create a new Web site to enable customers to build and order bicycles online. It should also enable customers to view the progress of the construction and make payments online. Assign a different development methodology to each person who will perform a basic design and argue why that method should be used for the project. Select one of the methodologies in the end.
  18. Examine the sample pseudocode used to compute the total of a set of numbers. Choose at least two programming languages and assign team members to a specific language and find or write the code needed to compute the total in that language. Submit and comment on the differences in the languages. Hint: The code does not need to run and you can skimp on the file and print statements.

    19. Rolling Thunder Bicycles logoRolling Thunder Database

  19. Rolling Thunder bicycles needs a new Web site to sell its custom bicycles. How should it be developed? What methodology could be used?
  20. Using the help system and Web site description of Rolling Thunder, create a data flow diagram to show the main processes directly involved with the customers (taking orders, sending notices and bills, and receiving payments).
  21. Rolling Thunder Bicycles needs a new system to generate and track electronic orders (EDI) to its suppliers. What methodology should be used to develop the system?
  22. Assume that the managers of Rolling Thunder bicycles have decided to purchase and implement an enterprise resource planning system. You have been selected to help determine which system the company should purchase. Outline the steps you will have to perform to select a vendor.
  23. Identify at least three information processing tasks at Rolling Thunder Bicycles that could be handled with InfoPath. Compare the benefits and drawbacks of using InfoPath versus adding new forms to the existing application.