Assignment Overview TP 1 is the first step in the five steps leading towards a finished term project (TP 5, which will be completed by the end of the semester). In this step, you choose the question that you want to answer in your term project.
Choosing a good subject will give you a strong foundation for a successful project, so the following list will help you decide on a subject that will work well.
Requirements for TP 1: Subject When thinking about your subject, you want something that will be as “real life” as possible, with the assumption that you have an influential career in information technology. As such, your subject should be guided by the following requirements.
1. For a specific organization. 2. For a specific group of people. 3. Stated as an action-focused yes-or-no question 4. Related to information technology (IT) 5. Related to competitive strategy 6. Controversial 7. Supported by five strong arguments in favor of your position (which you will determine when you do TP 2) 8. Stated in no more than 25 words
These are explained in detail in the next section.
Detailed Instructions 1. Your subject should allow you to prepare a presentation for a specific organization.
That is, you are taking the role of an employee or a consultant and are proposing a specific solution for an organization. (You are not preparing a TED talk or doing general-purpose research.) The organization can be for-profit or not-for-profit, and it can be real or fictitious.
A real organization is better, but if you don’t have any experience in a suitable organization, you can make one up, as long as you have a good vision of what they do, how big they are, etc. (That is, is your organization a five-person web development team, or a 5,000-person pharmaceutical firm?) You will need to include the name of your organization and what they do.
2. Your subject should allow you to prepare a presentation for a specific group of people.
You need to understand who your audience should be, and who the key decision-makers are. Key decision-makers are the people (or person) who can decide whether the organization will follow your recommendation or not, and they most likely control the funding needed, if any, to carry out your proposal. This might be your boss, the CIO, the president of the company or the board of directors.
Other people who should be in the audience would include anyone who should have or would want to have a say in the decision, or who would be upset if they weren’t informed. That might be your co-workers, other department heads, or possibly even key customers.
This doesn’t have to be a perfect list, but you need to consider this from the beginning. For example, would there be non-technical people in the room who wouldn’t understand IT acronyms or jargon? If you don’t have any experience with this sort of thinking, do your best, and email me if you have questions.
3. Your subject should be stated as an action-focused yes-or-no question.
That is, something like, “Should we do x?” Being action-focused, the question should propose to implement or upgrade or purchase or otherwise “do” something. Being yes-or-no, the answer will be either “yes, we should,” or “no, we shouldn’t.” (You may choose either one, and you don’t have to decide on your position at this stage. You may already have an opinion, but it may change as a result of your research.)
Note that the following types of subjects would NOT work: “What are the advantages of x?” (No action, not yes-or-no.) “The pros and cons of x.” (No action, not a question.) “Is x the best technology out there?” (No action.) “Why would a company do x?” (Not yes-or-no.)
4. Your subject must be related to information technology (IT).
IT is involved in a huge number of subjects these days, from security to transportation to health care to nutrition to retailing. But, there are plenty of areas in each of those industries that are not IT related. If it uses a computer or a chip, if it has to be programmed, if it requires telecommunications, if it uses the Internet—then it’s probably related to IT.
Even so, I’ve had students who have managed to propose projects that have nothing to do with IT. (Examples: “Should we start selling eco-friendly merchandise?” “Should we move our headquarters to China?” “Should all employees get more on-the-job training?”)
If you have questions about your subject, email me about it before the due date. In any case, I will let you know when I grade your TP1 if the subject you chose works or not. If not, we’ll work out something that will.
5. Your subject should be related to competitive strategy.
If you aren’t familiar with the concepts of competitive strategy, there is information about it in your textbook, and you can also do a search online (for example, the Wikipedia entry on “competitive advantage”). You should see concepts such as lowering costs, innovating, differentiating, helping develop alliances, increasing barriers to entry, improving logistics or agility, etc.
However, at a basic level, competitive strategy involves allowing your organization to do more of what it does, and do it better. For most organizations, that often means doing something that lets you make more money or spend less money or both. (For not-for-profits, there might be different strategic objectives.)
IT-related projects could involve either making more money or spending less money. IT is often a cost center (that costs money to operate) rather than a profit center (that brings in money to the organization), but strategic IT projects could be about saving money, being more efficient, protecting against security threats, or staying ahead of the competition—anything that helps the organization to stay in the game.
Whatever it is, you will need to be able to briefly state how your subject is related to strategy.
6. Your subject should be controversial.
If your subject is strategic, then it would probably cost money to implement, and if it costs money, then it’s probably controversial, because no organization likes to spend more money than it has to.
Even so, there are some projects that no one really objects to because they all understand the need. In the case of the term project for this class, you need to assume that you are presenting to decision-makers who aren’t sure they want to do what you are proposing (or, they want to do something you think is a bad idea), so you have to give them convincing arguments why your position is the best one.
You need to understand the major aspects of the controversy, that is, what are the most compelling arguments for your position and against it.
As part of this assignment, you will state one “pro” and one “con” argument related to your proposal.
7. You should expect to be able to find (through research) five strong arguments in favor of your position.
You don’t need the five arguments for TP 1. (You just need one argument for your “pro” statement and one for your “con” statement.) However, the five arguments you choose will form the core of your presentation from TP 2 onward, so you want to be sure to pick a subject that you can find good arguments for (or against). You will find these arguments through research, so if you pick something really obscure that no one is publishing about (“Should our firm use AI to colonize Jupiter?”), you will have trouble with the project later on.
How will you know? Doing some research now (and keeping track of it, since you will need it for TP 2) would be a good idea, unless you are already very familiar with the subject and the controversies about it.
8. Your subject should be stated in no more than 25 words.
This requires you to be direct and clear about what you are actually proposing (and to be clear to your audience). If you need more than 25 words to state your question, you should rethink your question.
How to Find a Subject If you are having a difficult time coming up with topics, read major online IT publications (e.g. Computerworld, Networkworld, ZDNet, etc.) or the tech sections of major newspapers (New York Times, Boston Globe, etc.) to see what is making the news. If it’s in the news, it’s probably controversial.
You can also look at the cases in the textbook. They are always about controversial subjects. Some of them are not very current, but many of them are, and you can usually find an updated version of whatever controversy they are dealing with.
Finally, if you know someone who works in IT, you could ask them about current topics in the field to see if they have any suggestions.
What do you turn in? Submit a text document in pdf format with the following five numbered sections (the numbers should be included):
1. The name of the organization the presentation is for, and the industry or activity of the organization
Example: 1. WoolyAir corp, skydiving tourism
2. The group of people the presentation is for, and who among them are the key decision-makers
Example: 2. Present to senior management group (approx. 5 people); key decision maker is the CEO
3. The subject question ● Action-focused yes-or-no question ● No more than 25 words ● Related to IT and competitive strategy, and controversial
Example: 3. Should we equip our skydiver-recovery alpacas with GPS devices?*
4. A brief pro and a con statement about your subject
Example: 4. Pro : We could better track and manage our alpacas, reducing costs and providing better service to our clients. Con : The expensive devices would be subject to frequent damage and possible theft given the current field conditions.
5. A short paragraph explaining how your subject is related to strategy
Example: 5. Our competitive advantage relies on having well-trained alpacas that can find and provide support for our skydiving clients, but we often lose the animals, requiring expensive flights to find and recover them. These devices would ultimately reduce our costs and increase the satisfaction of our clients, leading to economic growth for the company.
* Note: While this sounds like a fun project, there probably isn’t much research available that would provide good arguments for the position, so it wouldn’t work well for this class.
