You are a purchasing agent at a major manufacturing company. You have several hundred business cards from sales reps who have visited you, and you have hand-written notes on the back of most of them. You want a more automated way to keep track of all these sales people who call on you, including some facts about them, and their companies, such as if you like them and whether you have ever bought any products from them. 

A. What would you do or get to automate this (spreadsheet, database, maybe have IT build you a system, or find a commercial software package to buy and install? (Hint, you can do an Internet search to find some products out there that do things like this) 

B. What kind of factors would you consider, and why?

2. You are a business executive sponsoring an IT project that will develop a custom-built business application to take product orders over the Internet. You need to get this solution to market fast (in a few months). The IT project manager left you a voicemail that he wants your approval to purchase $250,000 worth of new software for the project, including Object Oriented C++ developer toolkits, Oracle database licenses, some utilities, UNIX licenses, and Java licenses. You want to get what is really needed, but want to make sure it really is needed (not just fund a lot of new toys for the IT department). 

You've asked the project manager to give you a high level technical overview. You want to organize some questions ahead of time about the software products that he mentioned, and what method or technique can his team use to make sure your business team gets to see working prototypes early in the process, and can give feedback to IT before the system is finished. 

A. How would you categorize your questions? Why?

B. What questions would you ask?