Case Study: Improving Customer Service Through New Technology

Although considerable risks do exist, adopting a new technology can improve the organization's business and lead to an increase in customer satisfaction. This case study describes how one company—Information Handling Services (IHS)—went through the process of evaluating, researching, and eventually adopting electronic beam recorder and optical disk technologies. The resulting system has enabled IHS to offer significant cost savings to its customers and to expand its product line in hopes of further improving its competitive position in the market.     

Improving A Solution's Quality Through Parallel Processing

The primary purpose of parallel computation is the fast execution of computational tasks that are too slow to perform sequentially. However, it was shown recently that a second equally important motivation for using parallel computers exists: Within the paradigm of real-time computation, some classes of problems have the property that a solution to a problem in the class computed in parallel is better than the one obtained on a sequential computer. What represents a better solution depends on the problem under consideration. Thus, for optimization problems, better means closer to optimal. Similarly, for numerical problems, a solution is better than another one if it is more accurate. The present paper continues this line of inquiry by exploring another class enjoying the aforementioned property, namely, cryptographic problems in a real-time setting. In this class, better means more secure. A real-time cryptographic problem is presented for which the parallel solution is provably, considerably, and consistently better than a sequential one.It is important to note that the purpose of this paper is not to demonstrate merely that a parallel computer can obtain a better solution to a computational problem than one derived sequentially. The latter is an interesting (and often surprising) observation in its own right, but we wish to go further. It is shown here that the improvement in quality can be arbitrarily high (and certainly superlinear in the number of processors used by the parallel computer). This result is akin to superlinear speedup—a phenomenon itself originally thought to be impossible.     

Integrating Core it Processes: A Case Study

Because of their growing importance, IT organizations are reexamining how they manage their core processes. Most often, these processes are disconnected, isolated, and barely controlled. the IT organization studied in this article used a holistic approach to evaluate, design, and implement a framework that integrates core IT processes. This integration helped the IT department to gain control of its key activities.     

Information Technology Alignment Planning—a case study

This paper describes the Information Technology (IT) Alignment Planning process—a strategic IT planning process created to complement the corporate planning model used by a major utility company in the Midwest. Corporate planning activities produced the divisional strategies, critical success factors (CSFs), and goals that then were used to by the IT Alignment Planning process to align IT within the company.The process is intended to aid in making the best possible use of IT resources in meeting the corporation's business objectives. Fifty-eight managers from five major business units participated in the study. Several important factors and their resulting benefits were identified. The model utilized an intuitive color-coded alternative to statistical output that was readily accepted by management. We found that the process helped align IT with business strategies and improved and facilitated communication on IT project management and development.     

软件过程改进中项目计划与跟踪的实例研究

项目的计划与跟踪是软件过程管理与改进活动中应该首先着手的方面。成熟的软件开发组织能够通过有效的软件项目计划与跟踪实现对项目的策划与监控。文章立足小组软件过程,以实际项目为背景,着重介绍了以项目计划和跟踪为主的软件过程改进实施活动。在此基础上,分析了相关项目的计划与跟踪数据,研究总结了实施中遇到的问题和经验,并提出了进一步完善的措施及相关支持工具的研制。     

Improving Data Quality in Practice: A Case Study in the Italian Public Administration

Assessing and improving the quality of data stored in information systems are both important and difficult tasks. For an increasing number of companies that rely on information as one of their most important assets, enforcing high data quality levels represents a strategic investment aimed at preserving the value of those assets. For a public administration or a government, good data quality translates into good service and good relationships with the citizens. Achieving high quality standards, however, is a major task because of the variety of ways that errors might be introduced in a system, and the difficulty of correcting them in a systematic way. Problems with data quality tend to fall into two categories. The first category is related to inconsistency among systems such as format, syntax and semantic inconsistencies. The second category is related to inconsistency with reality as it is exemplified by missing, obsolete and incorrect data values and outliers.In this paper, we describe a real-life case study on assessing and improving the quality of the data in the Italian Public Administration. The domain of study is set on taxpayer's data maintained by the Italian Ministry of Finances. In this context, we provide the Administration with a quantitative reckoning of such specific problems as record duplication and address mismatch and obsolescence, we suggest a set of guidelines for setting precise quality improvement goals, and we illustrate analysis techniques for achieving those goals. Our guidelines emphasize the importance of data flow analysis and of the definition of measurable quality indicators. The quality indicators that we propose are generic and can be used to describe a variety of data quality problems, thus representing a possible reference framework for practitioners. Finally, we investigate ways to partially automate the analysis of the causes for poor data quality.     

Transforming an Organization Through Prototyping: A Case Study

An organizational prototype is a forum to address simultaneously process, behavioral, and cultural change pursuant to business process redesign (BPR). in this case study, IS personnel facilitated organizational prototypes, thereby extending their knowledge of business systems to a new sphere, facilitating business process redesign. Success of the prototypes led to success in obtaining corporate funding for new client/server systems to support the changes in business operations.     

Improving the Quality of Web-based Enterprise Applications with Extended Static Checking: A Case Study

ESC/Java2 is a tool that statically detects errors in Java programs and that uses the Java Modeling Language (JML) as its annotation language. ESC/Java2 can modularly reason about the code of a Java Web-based Enterprise Application (WEA) and uncover potential errors. In this paper, we assessed the effectiveness of ESC/Java2 at helping developers increase WEA quality by detecting design and implementation issues.     

Building an Information Culture: A Case Study

A company's strategic plan, its attitude toward the use and integration of information and technology, and its financial position are key factors in determining the information-related directions it takes. This article describes the development of one companys information culture.     

Building an Information Culture: A Case Study

A company's strategic plan, its attitude toward the use and integration of information and technology, and its financial position are key factors in determining the information-related directions it takes. This article describes the development of one companys information culture.     

利用网络提高C语言实验教学质量

传统的一问一答实验教学模式不能适应现代高等教育的需要。文中介绍了充分利用网络和相关软件。以互动方式向学生传授科学的调试程序方法，以实验报告电子文档的规范化及资源共享，实现了教学相长。实践证明取得了良好的教学效果。     

利用网络提高C语言实验教学质量

传统的一问一答实验教学模式不能适应现代高等教育的需要。文中介绍了充分利用网络和相关软件,以互动方式向学生传授科学的调试程序方法,以实验报告电子文档的规范化及资源共享,实现了教学相长。实践证明取得了良好的教学效果。     

Improving Information System Efficiency Through Statistical Process Control

Statistical process control has been used in contemporary organizations to improve production and, more recently, administrative and service processes. This article focuses on the concepts behind statistical process control and its problem-solving techniques and illustrates how the MIS department can use these tools to improve a computer decision support system.     

Aligning Strategies, Processes, and it: A Case Study

Hewlett-Packard Co. developed a framework for aligning business and IT strategy. It has allowed the company to make process changes regardless of the limitations of existing technology and it makes visible the changes new technologies and processes have on each other. Most important, the framework enjoys a high level of commitment from people throughout the organization.     

Case Study: Managing IS Through Turbulent Times

Usually, when an organization faces a crisis situation, the IS department suffers cutbacks in staff and systems development projects without any consideration for the adverse effects these actions might have on the departments ability to contribute to the organization's bottom line. This case study examines how one company - Bethlehem Steel Corp-facing its own business decline carefully restructured its IS department to operate more efficiently on its own and become a stronger, more profitable contributor so that it could help Bethlehem Steel successfully compete in the global steel market.     

Information Integration in Multidimensional Databases: A Case Study

Recognizing the different information requirements for operational and strategic supports, many organizations are facing the problem of managing the two types of information as a unified resource. This article formalizes an analytical framework for managing these two types of information and discusses its implementation and use at a health services organization.     

Using WinWin Quality Requirements Management Tools: A Case Study

Negotiating stakeholder WinWin relationships among software quality requirements is a technique that emerged during the 1990's in order to overcome the difficulties arising from contract-oriented specification compliance (popular in the 1970's) and service-oriented customer satisfaction (popular in the 1980's). Obstacles to adoption of negotiated win-win relationships include coordination of multiple stakeholder interests and priorities, reasoning of complicated dependencies, and scalability of an exponentially increasing resolution option space. Conflict identification and resolution techniques are key success factors to overcome the obstacles. This paper describes two exploratory knowledge-based tools (called QARCC and S-COST)^* for conflict identification and resolution and how they were used in the digital library projects of a USC Software Engineering class during the 1996/97 school year. A comparative analysis with the artifacts surfaced by stakeholders and the artifacts generated and analyzed by QARCC and S-COST focused on the conflict resolution process, stakeholders' roles and their relationships to quality artifacts, and tool effectiveness. We conclude that the tools helped stakeholders: (1) surface and negotiate conflicts; (2) identify conflicts among functional and quality requirements; and (3) generate, visualize, and negotiate potential resolution options for the conflicts.     

生物特征识别中的信息融合技术

1 INTRODUCTION Biometrics refers to the automated methods of rec- ognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic, and has been the emerging technology during the past decade. Any human physiological or be- havioral characteristic that is universal, unique, perma- nent, and collectable could be used as a biometric. Physical biometrics includes fingerprints, hand or palm geometry, and retina, iris, or facial characteristics. Be- havioral characteristics, traits that…     

生物特征识别中的信息融合技术

网络信息化时代的一大特征就是身份的数字化和隐性化,信息安全问题成为关键的社会问题.生物特征识别技术是一门利用人类特有的个体特征来验证个人身份的科学,它比传统的基于口令和身份号码的方法更为的可靠.信息融合技术的应用可以大大提高生物特征识别系统的性能.由于指纹识别是最为成熟和流行的生物特征识别之一,本文主要以指纹为例讨论生物特征的多种信息融合方法和相关的主要研究成果.     

Information System Planning: A case review

Information System Planning (ISP) is a structured approach developed by IBM to assist organizations in establishing a plan to satisfy their short and long term information requirements. The ISP methodology was implemented at Tel-Aviv University. A comprehensive plan for the development of a Management Information System (MIS) was derived. This paper presents a review of the process by which the plan was obtained, a discussion of the methodology, and its ramifications.