UOP CMGT578 week 3-6 assignments

Week 3

Week 3 Assignment Instructions

Short-range Strategic IS Plan

For this assignment, you will produce a 3-page short-range strategic IS plan for Reynolds Tool & Die that includes a summary of where the company wants to go (its goals) and where it’s capable of going right now (based on its current IT infrastructure). Then you will recommend specific purchases and strategies necessary to make its IT function capable of supporting the company’s goals. Your plan should address outsourcing and the facilitation of business expansion into new markets, new regions, and new countries. The most important part of your strategic plan is outsourcing.

 

To complete this assignment, review the course scenario. Pay special attention to Reynolds’ plans for a joint venture with an automotive parts manufacturer in Mexico and the acquisition of a light aircraft parts supplier in Canada. The short-range strategic plan you create will assist Reynolds in realizing what, ultimately, is a rapid expansion of their business.

 

Your headings for this plan should include:

 

1. What Functions Will be Outsourced

 

Develop an outsourcing plan. You may decide to outsource all elements of IT for this expansion.  This would include a managed services contract, which would cover all hardware platform management, perhaps an entire data center, and an internal and possibly external Help Desk. Or, you may decide to outsource only certain key elements of the IT expansion, such as the Help Desk or the data center. Whatever decisions you make in terms of functions to outsource, support your decision by describing how your decisions will benefit the business.

 

1. Risk Mitigation and Outsourcing

 

Because of the expansion into any international market, senior management will require a risk mitigation plan for outsourcing IT. Under this heading, you should address outsourcing risks such as security, data ownership, an exit strategy for an outsourcing contract, etc.

 

Will you choose an outsourcing company based in an international market? What are the risks associated with that choice? If you outsource IT to a domestic (assume U.S.) company for the international expansion, what are the assurances that you, as a senior IT manager, would need to be comfortable with this type of scenario? For example, IBM has a significant managed services portfolio internationally though, obviously, IBM is a US-headquartered company. Are there risks associated with this solution?

 

1. Benefits of Outsourcing as a Short-Range Strategic Plan

 

Explain the benefits of outsourcing as a short-range strategic solution for market expansion. The topics you cover in this section should include any economic benefit you anticipate. For example, explain that a benefit is an increased ability to deploy solutions in a timely fashion, or it will provide better security (if applicable), etc. Tie your IT strategic outsourcing plan to the organization’s expansion strategy. Be specific when you explain how your plan will support the expansion strategy.

 

Include at least one reference in addition to the class text for this assignment.

 

Week 4

IT Budget

This is a two-part assignment. For this assignment, you are the Chief Information Officer, or CIO, of Reynolds Tool & Die. To complete this assignment, you will:

 

1. Create a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet proposing the Reynolds Tool & Die company’s IT operations’ annual budget, including maintenance, licensing, and any proposed new investments, such as hardware, software, cloud services, and/or outsourcing.
2. Create a 1- to 2-page executive summary defending your budget choices in terms of innovation and efficiency.

 

Part 1: Spreadsheet

The example spreadsheet that begins on page 2 is a rough suggestion of an annual, itemized budget. You will create your budget in Microsoft Excel. Your budget headings may vary, but your budget needs to be as specific as possible. Within each category, you should include purchases for the IT strategic plan. For example, if, as the CIO, you are contemplating moving applications to a cloud solution, your budget needs to reflect that process. If you are implementing or expanding VMWare as a virtualization solution, your budget needs to reflect those purchases.

 

The actual numbers can be approximate. A little research can point you in the right direction. For example, desktops run about $200-$300. You can use approximate figures for items such as licenses, maintenance agreements, servers, etc. Just make sure you have some justification (i.e., references) for the numbers you use.

 

Part 2: Executive Summary

Your executive summary needs to explain your budget. Possible headings include:

 

1. Predictable Annual Expenditures

 

Simply put, fixed operational expenditures keep the lights on. They are mainly hardware and software maintenance items, licensing, etc. These are expected costs of doing IT business. If, however, you are purchasing more hardware or software that will require additional annual maintenance and license agreements, you’ll need to defend those purchases and the annual expenditures that will remain for the company.

 

1. New Purchases

 

Any new purchases you recommend need to be justified. Why are you purchasing them? What benefit do you expect from the purchases? You’ll need to justify the purchases relative to the previous week’s assignments—Reynolds’ business situation and goals. For example, how will a new investment in hardware, software, or services achieve a competitive advantage for the company? What do you think the company needs to purchase to achieve its expansion goals? How much will outsourcing cost? 

 

1. Special Projects and Long-term Strategic IT Investments

 

As CIO, you need to look at technologies in the context of long-range strategic planning. Think of this section as your wish list. The investments in this category may not help the organization achieve its short-range goals, but they’re considered a long-term investment in innovation to remain competitive. For example, a manufacturing facility may consider artificial intelligence and robotics as a long-range plan. 

Example Spreadsheet

Your spreadsheet should look, roughly, like this:
 

Week 5

Week 5 Assignment Instructions

Intermediate Strategic IS Plan

For this assignment, you will construct a 3-page intermediate strategic IS plan for Reynolds Tool & Die. You will create an outline detailing a comprehensive IT strategy (not just purchases) to support the upcoming merger and acquisition planned by the company. Your plan must address timelines, systems integration, and change management.

 

In this assignment, you will be leading the IT transition team and once the merger and acquisition are completed, you will serve as the senior IT manager for the new organization that has absorbed the aircraft part manufacturer. You will also be the person working with your counterpart in the joint venture with the company from Mexico, but you will not have any managerial or supervisory role there. Assume the merger/transition announcement is made in the first quarter. Systems integration needs to start in the second quarter, and then must finish by November 30 in order to be prepared for the year-end accounting procedures.

 

Headings for your intermediate strategic information systems plan should include:

 

1. Current Assessment of the Merger/Acquired Organization

 

You’ll need to assess and analyze the IT operations and infrastructure of the organization you are about to merge with and/or acquire. This assessment should include hardware, software, and IT personnel.

 

1. IT Intermediate Strategic Plan

 

Based on your assessment, you are to propose an intermediate strategic plan for systems and IT organization integrations. Address these questions:

 

• Which organization’s IT assets will become the primary enterprise IT solution, and why?  Will you integrate the merger/acquisition target into your systems, or will the merger/acquisition IT platform become the primary solution? Your assessment should guide you in this decision.

 

• What will you need to perform the successful integration by the end of the third business quarter? Will you need outside integrators to assist? Will you need a supplemental budget for new hardware and software, as this merger probably wasn’t included in the annual budget? How involved will the merger/acquisition IT organization be involved in the integration, and will you retain their present IT management structure to lead them?

 

1. End of Plan and Change Management
    

An intermediate strategic plan is analogous to a project in that it has a finite life span. Address how you will wrap up the integration; specifically, what your new IT organization structure will look like, how you will deliver services to the new company, and what change management processes you will employ to deliver those services and address cultural changes and potential conflict within the new organization. Remember, there will be new users who will need to learn entirely new processes and tools as the new company moves forward.

 

Include at least one additional reference in addition to the class text for this assignmen

 

Week 6

Long-range IT Plan Focusing on Innovation

For this assignment, you’re a senior IT manager at Reynolds Tool & Die. You have been asked to write a 3-page plan detailing how you will create a culture of innovation in IT operations and integrate IT innovation into long-range strategic planning. Your proposal should include recommendations for specific technology innovations, and explain how you expect these innovations to drive business success over time.

 

This assignment requires you to analyze the company’s goals; analyze how IT innovation can contribute to those goals and how the current environment might be able to support innovation. After you have completed your analyses, you will synthesize all of this information into a long-range IT plan focusing on innovation. Specifically, your plan needs to address two things:
 

1. What IS innovations can you propose that align with the strategic long-range plans of both IT and the organization?
    
2. How can you create a culture of innovation within your IT organization?

 

Headings should be as follows:

 

1. Long-range, Innovative Solutions Planning

 

Consider this a wish list. What innovative technologies will you propose to help Reynolds accomplish its long-range goals? For example, does artificial intelligence have a place in the organization? Big Data? What about next generation cloud technologies? How will mobility (related to mobile devices) fit into your planning?

 

1. Creating a Culture of Innovation in the IT Organization

 

In order to implement creative solutions, you need an innovative team. Going forward, you’ll want to hire the right people and train them the right way. You already have staff who have been doing things a specific way, and you need to create a culture of innovation throughout the organization. How will you do that? Some areas to address are:

 

1. IT Staffing and Training

Does your current staff have the right skill sets? What skill sets will they need to add in order to be innovative? What are the potential budget considerations for ongoing training?
 

1. R&D

Can you make the case for research and development (R&D) within Reynolds’ IT organization? R&D isn’t synonymous with product development; it’s a function tasked with pursuing forward-thinking, innovative strategies, even strategies that the business doesn’t expect to pay off in the short term but hopes will pay off eventually in the long term.