Part A -

1. For ICT what are two main drivers for change?

2. ICT is identified as a supporting function within an organisation and yet critical to the success of an organisation. Identify some of the trends which are causing ICT to become such a key component within and organisation.

3. Do established companies or start-up companies have the advantage in a rapidly changing environment?

Part B -

1. What strategy types exist?

2. How can the checklist from Haines (1998) assist?

3. How would the elements of value, influence the design of a strategic plan?

Part C -

1. What is business architecture?

2. Why is business architecture important?

3. What are some of the components of business architecture and how would they be used?

4. Why is an understanding of the vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategy and tactics important?

5. Why do you use a business model canvas?

6. Why would you want to identify a business's capabilities?

Part D -

1. What is the purpose of using SWOT or PESTEL analysis as an input into Strategic Planning?

2. What is the business benefit to developing business case's for the different alternatives?

3. Why are KPI's and CSF's critical to Strategic Planning?

Part E -

1. How does human-centered design differ from the traditional product centric design business model?

a. Human-centered design focusses on the customer perspective rather than a product perspective.

2. How can interface design influence customer journey maps?

a. Building interfaces disparate interfaces across different channels reduces the customers experience. A good interface design will provide consistency, transparency and the ability to move seamlessly across different channels.

3. What it the difference between customer and employee experience?

a. Both are customers to ICT. The functionality differs. Customer experience needs to fulfill a need or desire; employee experience needs to fulfill a function.

4. How does the employee and customer experience interact with the organisation capabilities and processes?

a. Capabilities are the organisations ability to deliver on a need or desire for a customer. Processes are the way in which capabilities are combined to deliver the service or product.

Part F -

1. How can application programming interfaces and microservices support organisations in being more adaptable to change?

a. Microservices - an alternative approach to structuring applications. An application is broken into smaller, completely independent components, enabling them to have greater agility, scalability, and availability.

b. API's - are the evolution of the service exposure from SOA with increased management and security capabilities.

2. Why should the service landscape be developed and aligned to the business capability model as opposed to the business processes?

a. Businesses change processes over time. Capabilities are more stable as business change the capabilities less frequency. Exposing capabilities allows companies to assemble and mix to deliver services and processes through orchestration.

3. Data provides organisations with an insight and ability to engage in a meaningful way with customers, how can organisations ensure, privacy and protection are maintained, assured and monitored?

a. Data governance and monitoring

Part G -

1. Why is Enterprise Architecture important to an organisation?

a. It aligns the business and technology strategy of an organisation

b. Provides a framework to collaborate and communicate in a common language

c. Aligns applications into a larger eco system d. Provides governance

2. Which metrics should be used to monitor and manage the technology architecture of the organisation?

a. Service Levels (uptime, outages, incidents)

b. Resource usage

i. CPU

ii. Storage

iii. Memory

c. Usage

3. Data interchange between organisations is increasing, how could you make information available and secure for organisations?

a. Integration, open standards, API's.

4. Non-functional requirements are of key importance to the development of a technology architecture. These are seldom understood and difficult to justify but critical to the sustainability of solutions. How can you ensure these non-functional requirements are included into the technology architecture and the development of solutions?

a. Develop a standard set of non-functional requirements to support metrics.

Part H -

1. What is the difference between service management and project management?

a. Service management - running the business

b. Project management - managing the implementation of new capabilities.

2. What is the difference between ICT Management and Enterprise Architecture?

a. ICT Management - running the ICT business b. Enterprise Architecture - a framework to align business and technology

3. From reviewing the different software development methodologies when would Agile be more beneficial over Waterfall and vice versa?

a. Waterfall - projects with well-defined scope, deliverables and mature technology.

b. Agile - complex projects which need exploration and prototyping to define the ultimate product.

Part I -

1. In today's technology environment which do you think is more challenging the implementation of technology or the change management within an organisation to adopt and use the technology?

a. Technology implementations are normally the easier. Getting people to change and adapt is difficult.

2. From a software project implementation perspective which categories of costs would you expect in order to implement a solution?

a. People

i. Salaries and wages

ii. Professional Services

iii. Managed Services

b. Technology i. Hardware

ii. Infrastructure

iii. Software

c. Training

d. Other

i. Sundry items

ii. Supplies

iii. Team building

3. What kind of pricing models are there to acquire software? How would these different models impact the organisation?

a. Perpetual

b. Subscription

4. How would you estimate a solution which is highly complex and never been done within an organisation before? Hint. Look at Waterfall vs Agile in Module 8.

a. Prototype and learn to gain an understanding then estimate

Part J -

1. With the development of Cloud Computing and more advanced software, how must ICT models adjust to accommodate this new operating model?

a. Have a hybrid service model to escalate issue to the relevant provide and vendors.

b. Application performance management to understand availability and operational aspects.

2. Why is it necessary to have a holistic view and vision for the implementation of ICT?

a. Support, cost, integration, reduce investment, maximize benefits.