Deepesh Joseph April, 2009 Purpose The purpose of this document is to present a management report that analyzes the current usage of XML based Database Management System, its impacts and future trends of usage. Present Landscape Database Management Systems (DBMS) has been constantly evolving ever since first DBMS was installed and used based on Codd’s…
Deepesh Joseph Kristen Schmidt Raja Sekhar Tunuguntla August 9, 2007 High-Tech Worker Immigration Issues Introduction The United States has a long history of immigration, right from the time when the land was occupied by wanderers from Southeast Asia to the Vikings and later to the Europeans. Due to the peculiar nature of American history, even…
1. Introduction Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been in practice since last 3 decades and it is considered as the key enabler of Enterprise business success through effective alignment of business and IT. EA is an interesting concept and is subjected to constant research and development to cater to varying needs of complex and evolving business…
One of the core aspects of human life is its need to be informed and thus gain knowledge to act wisely, conscientiously, responsibly and intelligibly. We all are constantly seeking information about some context – may be it is to solve an issue related to our day to day life/work or it might be a…
Information and Knowledge are two interrelated concepts. Information is processed data that has the capacity to give form or shape to a matter or to the mind. Formation of matter can be appreciated in the way that “messages passed from Genes instruct the cell machinery to build an organism” (Campbell J., 1982). Shaping of mind…
Motivation is a very important psychological driving force that every individual require to complete an effort. An effort well done, leads to better performance and due satisfaction of one’s unfulfilled need. As we see from Maslow’s need hierarchy, this unfulfilled need belongs to various categories from physical (lower order) to mental (higher order) (William C.,…
After analyzing the NYPL website (www.nypl.org), it becomes clear that the Digital Library project is a part of a bigger reengineering initiative that has been in place in NYPL for past few decades. NYPL has realized the importance of refining its business processes by implementing efficient process automation systems. They have done extensive work on…
As a Director of Security for your organization, what policies or plans could you implement that might help control or diminish personal Internet use at the workplace? Do you trust that employees will use common sense and good judgment, or will you risk employee backlash when they discover that you’re implementing monitoring software? Personal Internet…
Viscione’s article (as in Refernce section) pictures out how important is designing and implementing a continuously improving budget process, for any business firm to survive. He warns all business firms either small or big to build its budgeting system right from the beginning of first year of its inception. He suggests many helpful hints that…
The goal of Milne et. al. article is to study how non-profit alliances lead to shape environment policy and market behavior. Focusing on this goal, they developed five hypotheses and conducted extended research to prove or disprove them, thus determining the true behavior of alliances that exist between non-profit and non-profit, non-profit and governmental organization…
Strategic Planning – An analysis from view points of Mintzberg and King 1. The way strategic planning originates: Mintzburg states that strategies can originate as specific intentions of the leaders, as deliberate strategies which take a linear path. King, on the other hand states that strategic planning originates from the need to identify best ways…
Personal SWOT analysis is a good “data collection and analysis method” that we can use to arrive at high performance goal oriented plans. I feel that this is something that we do unintentionally, many times, during turning points in our life. We don’t do this process theoretically and we might be interested in deriving it…
One interesting thing that I have noticed about is that most of the business case surveys that deal with world-mindedness, stresses more on religious, cultural and racial factors (surface level diversities) which are always hard to deal with. Also, stress on immigrant jobs, national loyalty and patriotic feelings was relevant. I think most of these…
This review of a chapter from a famous management book reflects on a sample business case when a company which was moving towards bankruptcy was offered a fund raising deal which might help her to to be saved. Read along the review as how we could apply ethical intensity and social responsibility to attach points…
Employee resistance due to cynicism will be a major factor in any organizational change process. The negative affectivity (NA) (Wanous et. al, Jun 2000 ) and fear factors (psychological and desire based) are the reasons for this kind of resistance. My organization recently went through a major change process where the development team migrated from…
The Wanous study (as in referred article) brings out the importance of considering negativity of employees during an organizational change and find remedies for it. Its core focus is on cynicism, defining it as “pessimistic outlook for successful change and placing blame on the managers and union leaders who are responsible for the change” (Wanous…
Motivation is a very important psychological driving force that every individual require to complete an effort. An effort well done, leads to better performance and due satisfaction of one’s unfulfilled need. As we see from Maslow’s need hierarchy, this unfulfilled need belongs to various categories from physical (lower order) to mental (higher order) (William C.,…
This review of a chapter from a famous management book reflects on a sample business case when a company which was moving towards bankruptcy was offered a fundreaising deal which might help her to to be saved. Read along the review as how we could apply ethical intensity and social responsibility to attach points to…
The main problem areas that Doran focuses on are Money management and Planning. It would be interesting to reflect on how the lack of a well defined Theory of Business (TOB) must have affected Sassy Scrub’s failure. Looking at the circumstances under which the company originated, it is hard to believe that it had a…
Put myself back to when Peggy Piontkowski first created Sassy Scrubs. If she would have done a SWOT analysis, what might she have listed in each category (S, W, O, and T)? Quoting from an internet resource, about the circumstances in which Piontkowski started Sassy scrubs – Her daughter wanted a better scrub suit for…
Barnes and Noble’s Response: Barnes and Noble had started studying online business during late 1994. It was not in response of Amazon.com’s going online that they thought about doing online business. Their mission in starting online book retail was clear – To leverage Barnes & Noble brand name online. They soon realized the substitute threat…
Traditional book selling and Online book selling – Comparing a customer’s willingness-to-pay for books supplied in these two business models. (i.e. Do they expect to pay less online? Why? What else do they expect from each method?) The major differences between the customer’s willingness-to-pay in traditional book selling and its online version can be analyzed…
Separation of Stores and Online Operations for Barnes and Nobles: Was this a good idea?? What was its intent and did it work?? The case study of Barnes and Noble would show that they split their operations into existing traditional and online bookstore, during Spring 1997. As the history states, the intent was two fold…
Price cuts are market strategies that companies introduce when they enter into competition. Barnes and Noble’s and Amazon.com’s case was no different. As seen from the case study, Barnes and Noble introduced deep discounts of 30% on hard-covers and 20% on paperbacks, same as that of Amazon.com, to pose direct threat to online sales. Responding…
Considering substitution threats, our US Post Office is faced with a serious threat from email and online banking. Their proposed solution is to raise the price of first class mail again. What do you think of that strategy? Have they all but given up? Is it their only recourse? What happens next? Considering the widespread…
Since 2000, the competition between http://www.amazon.com/ and www.barnesandnoble.com/ has become intense with the entrance of competitors such as Borders and Books-A-Million Inc. Currently, as per the last traded values – 60.60 & 40.77 (Yahoo! Finance, 2007, April 27) and customer ratings – 97% & 92% (BizRates.com, 2007, April 27) , Amazon is ranked #1 in…
So far we have seen some aspects of IA as related to website design (which indeed is one of the main strategic enterprise information management system). But, application of IA never ends. As IT blends into every human activity, it is creating new avenues of IA to explore. This situation will soon lead to a…
Information Architecture, in general, should be implemented in such a way that it makes the user feel safe and comfortable while surfing through the site. Providing links to privacy policy, Feed backs and the like would be good starting point. As indicated, there is no clear rule of thumb for internet governance and thus no…
“Not only is shopping melting into everything, but everything is melting into shopping” (The above sentence is taken from the referred article) The article ‘The mauling of America’, by Wittman K., introduces the consumer oriented nature of retail architectures. The article brings into light the most visible forms of ‘Gruen effect’ where the consumer is…
“Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest” (The above sentence is taken from Jim Collin’s famous article – ‘Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?’ – Below is my anlaysis of this topic as related to Information Architecture) Collins’ article brings out the importance of having a unified “organizing idea” that guides everything….
This topic is very relevant when we realize the importance of aligning Information Architecture (IA) with the business strategy. The topic that we reflect on refers to how business strategy and IA are related. It means that business strategy drives the structural design or the IA. In other words, the website IA should support the…
“Instead of creating a clever new product before trying to sell it to customers, the anthropological approach requires companies to look at the customer perspective first and feed that information back to developers and designers.” (The above sentence is from the referred article) Thomas K.’s article is very much relevant in the context of user…
“Farmers Vs. Cowmen” – Is a sentence from the referred book and below is my review, recommendations – I found this topic very interesting and thought provoking since it is directly linked to the way that our mindsets are molded by our educational/professional background. The way different professionals visualize the website is accurately captured. Having…
“User’s impressions of a Web site—about usefulness, ease-of-use, and how enjoyable the experience is—are formed by the Web site’s visual design” (The above sentence is from the referred article and below is my insights on this and analysis of couple of websites – walmart.com and walgreens.com) I liked the article, the way it hits the…
“Navigation Systems aids us to chart our course, determine our position and find our way back” (The above sentence is quoted from the referred book) I liked this analogy of a conventional navigation system as related to the web-site navigation systems since it supports the basic user need to browse through information with most satisfaction….
“When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships” (This is based on a sentence as referred in the article by Tufte) I would like to expand on this concept and relate it to need for grouping related content together. The idea is simple – Our mind is less…
“..Scent of information..” (This is based on a reference sentence as seen in Krug’s User experience book) The above extract from Krug’s book caught my attention since often we deal with IA components that ensure scents of useful information while navigating or searching through the web site. The need to keep the user less distracted…
This is one of the important aspects of (Information Architecture) IA that directly improves usability of websites by supporting information seeking behavior of users. As I see that this feature most suits e-commerce web-sites that would require extensive product browsing and searching, it won’t be as of much use in case of other kind of…
“Elements of User Experience” (My reflections on the referred article from Garret) Garret’s presentation of ‘Elements of User Experience’ touched all vital aspects of web development that can affect user experience. What I liked most is the way the document brings into light how these user elements gets their unique roles in a web-based software…
“Your Goal should be for each page to be self explanatory” (This is based on my reading from the referred text, my insights, recommendations) The above sentence from the section on page 18, is the key towards not making users think what each feature/functionality is for. The idea here is to structure and design the…
“Practicing IA in the real world” (This is summary of what I read from the referred book and my thoughts, recommendations) For me, the most satisfying definition for Information Architecture is that it is the ‘structural design of shared information environments’ and the most satisfying IA deliverable is the blueprint model. The reason why I…
UML or Unified modelling language is the best tool for modelling object oriented systems. As we know, in objet oriented modelling and design, we identify objects (entities)within the system and analyze how they interact with each other and thus design an interactive model preserving their individual properties, behavior as well as publicizing their public attributes…
ERD or Entity relationship diagram is the most common database design and modelling tool used in System Design phase. The diagram basically represents all data entities of the targeted system, their attributes and relationships. Database modeller represents ERD in various levels of details such as Context Data Model, Key based model and Fully attributed model….
Data Flow Diagram is the widely used system design tool which aids in depicting flow of logic and data (commonly called process flow) within the targeted system, in various levels of detail. Level 0 DFD is usually called ‘Context Diagram’ and it gives the highest level view. Starting from the black box in Context Diagram,…
Use cases are one of the excellent tools for representing functional requirements of a system. Use case modelling refers to modelling of system’s functions in terms of business events (use cases), who initiated the events (actors) and how does system reacts to those events (Whitten J.L, 2007). Use case models are usually represented as use…
The freedom of expression, being one of the firmly stated and affirmed right in the US constitution, I think the question refers to effecting in a global scenario. Freedom of expression touches most sensitive areas such as religion, which has a soft corner for. Considering the current world situation, I think pushing for such agendas…
Offshore outsourcing is a highly debated topic. It would be nice if we reflect on the reasons that has lead to offshore outsourcing – 1. Highly skilled workforce for cheap labor – Most of the developing countries offers education that is highly specialized and with focus on international job economy. Difference in dollars and x…
We have seen so much about IT and all of us have been a part of it by some means or other. We all know what IT refers to and what are its applications. I have been trying to define what is IT or Information Technology, since some time. This is puerly a personal effort…
Deepesh JosephAugust 2006 Information Management (IM) refers to any activity that leads to effective collection, storage, retrieval and analysis of information by focusing on business strategy and by continuously improving business competitiveness and adaptability. The ultimate goal of any IM job is to add up to the combined efforts to meet the required business strategy….
Operational Vs Informational system : Operational Systems are those which are based on current data and thus supports current/day-to-day functioning of a business. Informational Systems on the other hand are based on historical information and thus supports complex data mining/analysis and decision making. The core difference lies in the way queries are run to process/analyze…
a. Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous distributed database system Homogeneous database systems involve similar databases distributed over the network (on separate machines). Example of homogeneous database system is an enterprise’s nation-wide ERP system which comprises of distributed databases, all of which are Oracle. Heterogeneous database systems on the other hand are distributed database systems that consist of…
Deepesh Joseph February 2009 The main purpose of normalization is to reduce data redundancy and avoid inconsistent data. Normalization leads to separation of unrelated entities into separate entities. In effect, normalization leads to clean database design. Since we do not store redundant data, we save storage space and save resources to maintain (update, delete) redundant…