QUESTION 1

The following sections present case studies of two large Malaysian organizations
which acquired a particular brand of a front-end personal computer (PC) based
Computer Aided Systems Engineering (CASE) tool. This tool provides automation
support to structured methods. Case 1 is a large shipping enterprise where the CASE
tool was successful and was used to develop several applications. On the other hand,
Case 2 is a leading market research company that applied the same CASE tool and
found it unsuitable and thus abandoned it.
Case study 1: a shipping enterprise
The shipping enterprise maintains a fleet of cargo and passenger ships that regularly
travel from several ports of Malaysia to various destinations across the continents.
The management information systems (MIS) department of the enterprise was formed
in 1983 and is primarily responsible for developing and maintaining application
software in supporting the shipping-related activities of the enterprise. The MIS
department was headed by a manager who had a postgraduate degree in information
technology and was involved in the management and supervision of MIS activities
over one-and-half decades. More than 50 information systems (IS) personnel
including programmers, system analysts and database administrators were employed
in the MIS department. A mixture of traditional systems development life cycle and
some variants of structured methods were used by the IS personnel. The majority of
the software applications were developed using INFORMIX-4GL. In addition, C
language and the dBASEIV database management system were used.
In early 1990, the MIS department decided to acquire a front end CASE tool with the
aim of automating their system analysis and design activities. A secondary objective
was to improve the quality and productivity of their application software. A
committee comprising an MIS manager and two senior systems analysts was formed
to recommend a suitable CASE tool for the organization. The committee understood
that the structured method would be the basis for the development of all future
applications within the shipping enterprise and thus decided to acquire a CASE tool
that would automate the structured method. In essence, the committee took three
factors into consideration: the selected tool must support automation of the structured
method, the tool must have a reasonable price and the vendor must be competent
enough to provide required level of training on both the method and the tool.
Based on the above rationales, the committee members made a brief survey of the
CASE market. Eventually, they identified Picture Oriented Software Engineering
(POSE) a front-end PC-based CASE tool that could meet their requirements. The
price of the POSE tool was reasonable and the vendor appeared to be stable
financially. Provision for necessary training and consultation was assured from the
vendor of the POSE tool.
The POSE tool was implemented in two phases. First, the committee anticipated that
the introduction of a new technology like CASE may incur resistance from
developers. As such, the committee arranged a workshop on CASE in collaboration
with the vendor. The vendor sent both technical and sales personnel to the workshop
and a half-day talk was held at the premises of the shipping enterprise. The talk was

followed by a demonstration of the POSE tool. The committee further realized that
their developers would require a good skill in structured methods prior to adopting a
CASE tool. Consequently, they chose a group of 12 developers who were familiar
with structured methods and had working experience of such methods. This group
was sent for two weeks in-depth training on POSE.
The second phase was the identification of a small scale pilot project. Several analysts
who received training on the POSE tool were involved in the pilot project. This team
was given extra support and their performance was closely monitored. The CASE
committee further engaged end-users during the various phases of the pilot project.
Several researchers have examined the impact of the POSE tool from two
perspectives: organizational change and change in productivity and quality. From the
organizational perspective they noted that the introduction of the POSE tool triggered
a new job title labeled CASE Administrator. It even influenced the organizations
policy to recruit new IS personnel in this direction. The MIS manager indicated that in
future preference would be given to those applicants having experience with CASE
tools but not necessarily with the POSE tool.
The MIS department successfully built six new applications using the POSE tool and
two additional applications were in progress. The MIS manager expressed satisfaction
with the POSE tool and indicated a considerable improvement in quality and
productivity. Even though a higher productivity was achieved in all the six CASE
built applications, the degree of productivity improved varied across the different
stages of the development life cycle. The researchers noted that relatively high
productivity was perceived in the upper and middle stages of the life cycle compared
with the coding stage. It is obvious because POSE is a front-end CASE tool and does
not generate any source code. Programmers are still required to code manually based
on the automated analysis and design specifications. As a result, productivity gain was
perceived to a lesser extent during the coding stage.
A moderate degree of quality improvement was experienced in all CASE assisted
applications. Quality improvement was determined in terms of three factors such as:
communication between developers, documentation support and project standards.
Improved communication resulted as the developers quickly implemented user
requirements into working prototypes. Moreover, end-users were able to interact
directly with such prototypes in a live environment. The users perceived how quickly
their views and needs were incorporated through the POSE tool. This helped in
building increased understanding between developers and users. Such improved
communication in turn helped to identify the exact requirements of the system.
Additionally, POSE documentation features freed developers from performing the
tedious process of documentation and thus allowed them to concentrate more on the
design process. The tool identified errors, inconsistencies and ambiguities that were
difficult to detect manually. Moreover, the tool kept documentation up-to-date
whenever a change was made in analysis or design. Lastly, the developers adopted the
same notations and techniques across all the CASE assisted projects. This helped in
establishing a standard in software development practice of the MIS department. As a
result, project standards rose significantly.

Case study 2: a market research company

This section presents the experience of a leading market research company that made
an unsuccessful attempt to introduce a CASE tool within its MIS department. This
company was founded in 1964 and subsequently pioneered the development of
market research services in Malaysia. The company consists of nine departments
supporting its various research activities. More than 300 full-time personnel were
employed in this company. The MIS department of the company was formed in 1988.
Its main function is to develop and maintain application software in supporting the
research activities of the company. The MIS department was headed by a manager
who had a bachelors degree in Computer Science and had seven years working
experience.
The operations of the MIS department were supported by a local area network that
included 30 workstations of various makes and models. Thirty personnel with four
systems analysts, six analyst programmers and 15 programmers were employed in the
MIS department. The IS personnel were engaged to develop various applications
covering accounting software, data tabulating, market research systems and reporting
facilities. Turbo Pascal and FORTRAN 77 were used in system implementation. In
addition, the Paradox database management system was frequently used by the
developers. Several researchers noted that the MIS department did not adopt any
standard method to perform systems analysis and design and individual analysts were
allowed to practice their own methods. However, the department in general adopted a
top-down approach for writing the source code. Occasionally, object-oriented
programming was used.
In December 1989, the MIS department decided to acquire a CASE tool in order to
automate their systems analysis and design tasks and to enhance the quality of
applications. Moreover, the company wanted to reduce overall application
development time as well. Furthermore, the MIS manager came to know that some
other organizations were planning to automate the software development process.
This information hastened their decision to procure a CASE tool.
A vendor of the POSE tool approached the MIS manager who was attracted by the
promise of quality and productivity gains advocated by the vendor. A demonstration
of the POSE tool was subsequently arranged in the premises of the vendor which was
attended by two systems analysts in addition to the MIS manager. The demonstration
convinced them about the potential benefits of the POSE tool and based on the
recommendation of the MIS manager the POSE tool was eventually acquired. In other
words, few arrangements were needed to incorporate the POSE CASE tool smoothly
within the organizations IS development practice.
The researchers learned that the selected CASE tool was applied to develop a smallscale pilot project. The MIS manager was the only participant in the development of
the pilot project which took a year to complete. The researchers were surprised to
know that the functions and features of the POSE tool were learned by the manager
himself.
The evaluation of the MIS manager with the POSE tool was not encouraging. He
complained that the tool was time-consuming. Savings in terms of time and efforts

were not perceived. Instead, an increase in development time was felt. Moreover, the
tool did not operate on a LAN environment. Lastly, the lack of vendor support was
highly criticized. Based on these problems, the MIS manager decided to stop using
the POSE tool.
REQUIRED:
(a) Analyze the above two case studies and describe FIVE (5) factors that lead to the
gap between them that is in relation to the performance of the POSE tool
adoption.
(b) From your answers in (a), describe THREE (3) activities that were adopted by the
shipping enterprise but were ignored by the market research company. Explain the
element that lead to this phenomenon.
(c) From your answers in (b), explain how the involved activities can be used as a
basis for a continuous re-examination and modification of information systems.
(d) Identify and describe TWO (2) communication strategies that make the shipping
enterprise successfully implemented CASE tool adoption.
(e) It is argued that one of the elements that makes shipping enterprise more
successful than market research company in IS development practice is that the
existence of a continuous organizational learning. Define what is organizational
learning and how it is established within the shipping enterprise.

QUESTION 2
Case study 2 (a market research company) in Question 1 is referred to. Imagine that
the company appoints you as a consultant to advice on how to make things better in
its information systems developmental practice. The managing director asks you to
see him to discuss about several issues. Follows are the issues that are raised by him.
REQUIRED:
(a) Describe FOUR (4) reasons why is it of paramount importance to have an
effective information system.
(b) Describe FOUR (4) elements that need to be understood in details before any IS
development project can be commenced.
(c) A continuous re-examination and modification of IS contents is critical to avoid
core capabilities of today become core rigidities of tomorrow. Explain this in
details and describe SIX (6) strategies that can be adopted by the company to
effectively deal with that scenario.
(d) Explain TWO (2) lessons that can be learned from the case studies as cited in
question (1).

QUESTION 3
The information systems (IS) Steeering Committee has been suggested as one such
integrative mechanism. This committee, generally composed of user, top
management, and IS representatives, is intended to bring a broad perspective to focus
on system issues. Its use as an IS management tool has been widely advocated in the
systems literature. It has been recommended as a solution to the problem of linking
users and data processing personnel and as vehicle for recognizing and incorporating
the needs of various functional departments in an organization. It has also been
recognized as one of the most efficient avenues for improving IS planning. Despite
the diversity among organizations in the form and functions of these committees,
these committees have been viewed, in their direction-setting role, as an effective way
of getting top management involvement in IS planning, ensuring the fit of information
systems with corporate strategy.
While the usefulness of the steering committee approach to IS management has thus
been addresses in the literature, there has not been much empirical work done to test
for their efficacy in todays complex IS environments. Committee decisions are made
by individuals who may have vested interests and may either not be aware of or not
wish to recognize the effect factors, internal and external to the organization, on the
organizational IS. Therefore, while much of the literature has stressed the usefulness
of these committees from a theoretical standpoint, additional empirical work seeking
support for the suggested usefulness of these committees should be a contribution to
this bode of literature.
Prior empirical research on this topic has focused on the effect of these committees on
IS practices. Doll (1985) found that organization with steering committees tended to
have more formal IS planning processes and firmer commitments for long-term
funding for IS. The author proposed that the greater the use of steering committees,
the higher the level of acceptance of IS planning.
Source:Ragunathan, B.,Ragunathan, T.S., MIS Steering Committees: Their effect on Information
Systems Planning, Journal of Information Systems, Spring 1989, p. 104-116

REQUIRED:
(a) Based on the above quotation from Ragunathan and Ragunathan (1989), discuss
FOUR (4) reasons for the establishment of steering committee on the
management of IS/IT.
(b) Sometimes the group mentioned above fail to steer IS/IT in a beneficial or even
consistent direction with the business strategy. Discuss THREE (3) problems that
could probably lead to this problem.
(c) The author mentioned about three major groups in the IS/IT steering committees.
Discuss each of the groups.
(d) Discuss the proposed statement by the author.

The greater the use of steering committees, the higher the level of acceptance of
IS planning.

END OF QUESTION