Chapter 13

    Just two days ago and yesterday I was a part of creating a system to generate a report for a big shot guy in California. My manager gave me what needed to be done (the request from the user) which was the analysis part done for me. Then I started the design part to decide which categorical qualifications to pull for the report to be accurate and how to split the work up between myself and the other interns to get the job done quicker. The programming part included actually developing the string of qualifications and running the report and tallying how many tickets were open. The testing part of this project was sending that number to my supervisor to see if that sounded right, if it wasn't then I would run new strings and reports again. Then the conversion would have been sending the report in an email to the user in California and asking if they would like anything else done. Finally the production & maintenance would be any future enhancements (which I did have to make) to the report and strings to gain more accurate information.
    This week I read chapter 13. On Tuesday we discussed the chapter. Then I completed our Assessment over the case study on Chrysler's choice to outsource to TCS's information systems. After that, on Thursday we discussed a little bit about the case study and then we kind of went more in depth in the systems development process by deciding what the steps were for building a house (my group) and cooking (other group). Finally now I am finishing up my blog for the week.
    This week we learned about systems development. We learned that the steps for creating a system include Analysis, Design, Programming, Testing, Conversion, and Production & Maintenance. The main goal in the analysis stage is to locate and find problems or find what is needed. In the design stage, the company plans out how they are going to make the changes without actually making any change. Programming is the stage where the system actually gets changed or created. Conversion is the time it takes to start using the new system. There are a few different kinds of conversion techniques including the parallel strategy, where the new system is implemented alongside the old system simultaneously, the direct cutover technique, where the new system immediately replaces the old system, the pilot study, where the new system replaces the old system for only a small group of people before replacing the old system for everyone else, and the phased approach, which is where only one functionality of the new system replaces the same functionality on the old system at a time. This was a very interesting week of learning as this is probably what I plan to do when I have my degree (program and upkeep those programs). Well, I hope you enjoyed!

Week 11

    I believe that these Web 2.0 tools would be a great source to add and distribute knowledge across a company. The more minds you have contributing to a cause, the more knowledgeable they will be. This would make a wiki a great idea for a company to have everyone contribute their knowledge to the company as a whole. They could add discussion on important topics or add to new ones. In addition, wiki's are always current because anyone can add anything at anytime. Blogs could be utilized too, however, they probably wouldn't be as efficient as a wiki or a portal since they are only updated by the administrator of the account or by adding comments which are hard to search through for specific information. All in all, Web 2.0 tools would definitely add to the efficiency of adding and distributing knowledge across a company in my opinion.
    This week I went over Chapter 11 and on Tuesday we took a clicker quiz over it. Then on Thursday we discussed the case study on Coke's knowledge management systems. This week I created a new account on the Student Dashboard and a new AdWords account and uploaded our pre-campaign report to it. We made a campaign with a couple of AdGroups that are paused until we can get our money from Google.
    This week we went over chapter 11 which was about knowledge management. We learned that the knowledge supply chain includes four major process the first being acquisition, how knowledge is being pulled into the company. The second is storage which is pretty self explanatory, how and where the knowledge is stored. It can be stored and tacit knowledge, people with knowledge without having it put anywhere physically, or explicit knowledge, knowledge that is wrote down for anyone to use. The third step is dissemination, how the company distributes the knowledge throughout for people to use. Then the final step is application, actually using the knowledge. We also went over a bunch of intelligent techniques such as fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is used when the answer to a decision isn't always a yes or no but has a varying scale. An example is if someone wants the room to be cool. This could mean any number of degrees that isn't always the same every time. That is basically what we went over along with some more knowledge applications and techniques.