Instructions

By the end of the first class session/module, each student in the class will have completed reviewing the description of each of the course assignments. Each student should then begin thinking about a suitable venue that he or she knows of to research a Post-Implementation Review (PIR) report describing a recently completed information systems development project. However, even if the student can't think of such a target of study, he or she must still plunge ahead and conduct this interview ASAP.

In order to get a better fix on this idea, each student will conduct an initial short field interview with either:

An information systems/information technology professional (it is better if the interview subject was recently involved with an information system implemented in the past 2 years, but this is not required)

OR

A business professional who was recently involved with a recently implemented information system (If you interview a business professional (such as a manager) this individual MUST have been involved with an information system project implemented in the past 2 years)

Some Themes/questions for your interview

1. What type of job does your interview subject do? For whom?

2. What projects is he/she currently working on for the organization What projects has he/she recently completed?

3. What IT applications has the firm recently implemented?

4. Were the most recently applications developed in-house, were they outsourced development or were they application software packages that were customized and purchased?

5. How much time does he/she spend in each of the following activities?

a) Gathering requirements

b) Researching hardware/software options

c) Documenting

d)Programming

e) Training and developing training materials/user manuals

f) Customizing existing software

g) Software maintenance

Even though the actual PIR project will be based upon a very specific and detailed list of questions, the instructor would like you to have think for yourself a bit more during this initial field interview. Moreover, students are encouraged to not only cover these themes but to try to go somewhat beyond them in delving out a potential target of study that appears feasible for the PIR report - The instructor will be considering this carefully when grading this assignment. The coherence and clarity of the completed assignment will also be assessed.

To get a better idea of what kind of information system would be suitable to study for the post-implementation audit project, please see the overview description for this Post-Implementation Review project. After doing so, you are welcome to pose questions to your instructor for further clarification should you need this.

Students sometimes get excited at the idea of studying a business information system that they have no real contacts with. For example, sometimes they will read an article about an inventory system implemented by Best Buy and propose this as a target of study. The problem with this is that this provides no assurance of finding willing informants from the people who worked on the project. Without willing informants to answer your questions, you will have a very difficult time writing the PIR report. Organizations like Best Buy can be notoriously secretive about their IT projects. This is not an insurmountable problem, but if you do come up with a potential target like this it would be a good idea if you first check out the organization and make sure you have willing informants for interviews (i.e. people connected or involved with information system project who are willing to be interviewed).

This initial interview assignment can help you identify a target of study for the post implementation review project. Even if it does not, it can help prepare you for the field research tasks you will perform later as part of the PIR project.

By and large, this is probably why smaller organizations (like local small or medium sized businesses or local community organizations) tend to work better as a target of study for this Post-Implementation Review project. In these organizations, it is simply easier to determine the relevant informants and to gain their trust and willingness to participate.

This interview will be summarized into a 2 page submission by the student to the instructor that is due on the date indicated on the course schedule. This assignment will be submitted as a WORD document uploaded into the assignment DROPBOX.

Where do you start?

In reading this, many of you are now asking yourselves: where can I find an information technology professional to interview? Moreover, since this assignment is due quite early in the semester, you must really get to work on this as soon as possible.

Nevertheless, here are some suggestions for how to find an appropriate interview subject:

If you work for a business or government organization, you should consider interviewing the IT/MIS director for your organization.

If you work P/T or F/T in any reasonably sized organization, it is likely that there are some IT workers around (like help desk staff, programmers, analysts, network technicians or even IT managers).

Your interview subject can even be someone you know who is not a co-worker: a friend, relative or acquaintance whom you know who works in such a job.

Chapter 1 in your textbook helpfully lists a number of IT job titles/occupations.

Desired further outcomes from the Interview

When teams are formed by week 4 (hopefully), the initial task of each PIR project team will be to sort out from among the ideas of each team member the one that appears most promising as a researchable target of study for the project proposal (the initial assignment for the PIA report/course project).

A significant purpose of this short assignment is to ensure that when your team begins its first online discussion in your team discussion forum, this initial intra-team discussion should be a fruitful one and will not lack at least some good research prospects.

Indeed, your instructor may elect to form project teams not only according to individual preferences and demographic factors, but also partly based on allocating to each project team an appropriate share of what he or she considers potentially researchable targets of study.

As your team narrows down the choices and tries to flesh out a practical target of study, you will be encouraged to contact the instructor further for additional feedback.

How this assignment is evaluated

Content

1. To what degree were suggested interview themes addressed?

2. How thoroughly were they addressed?

3. To the extent that some questions are left unanswered was a coherent explanation for this omission provided by the authors?

4. Did the interview submission go beyond the interview themes (enumerated above)?

Writing Quality/Readability

1. Was the assignment submission written well? Was it free of all grammar and spelling mistakes?

2. Did it tell an interesting story? Did it evoke further questions?

3. Did it read like an integrated interview?

3. Could interview be read and understood by someone outside the class?

Wildcard criteria (Can yield bonus points)

Did the interview successfully identify someone who can provide a good lead to target of study for the PIR project?

Grading table:

Grade	Criteria
100	All 8 criteria above were met AND the interview was also engaging to read and provoked the reader's thinking
95	All 8 criteria above were met
90	7 out of 8 criteria were met
85	6 out of 8 criteria were met
80	5 out of 8 criteria were met
75	4 out of 8 criteria were met
70	3 out of 8 criteria were met
65	2 out of 8 criteria were met
60	1 out of 8 criteria were met
10 thru 50	Same as above, but late