Chapter 10 Discussion
1. Some of the strategies that organizations can use to respond to threats from competitors or to take advantage of opportunities are to use information systems analysis in order to problem solve in these areas. A mission statement can help an organization identify and pursue these strategies by defining the goals of the organization and outlining how to accomplish those goals.
2. The decision to create an information system driven by new technology is good because that keeps everything being used up-to-date. But, it can also cause problems because new technology continually comes out, so by this process all information systems would rapidly become obsolete. The decision to create a system driven by the user is good because then the people that need the information are the people that are involved in what goes into the system. But, this can also cause problems because the users don’t always know the best way of creating a system for their objectives.
3. I remember having problems when using any Microsoft software on an Apple for many years. I realized the problem was in how incompatible these two were at the time. I had to spend a lot of time at the ‘help desk’ in order to figure out how to use the software correctly. Since then, Microsoft and Apple have become more compatible in many ways, although there are still many ‘gaps’ in the compatibility.
4. Developing the documentation before the system could change the development process and the system itself. If the documentation was developed first, then the development process would be geared more to making it easier to run a system around documentation. The system itself would be centered around how the documentation works, instead of the other way around.
