need help with short essay questions

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There are 8 questions, each needs to be a page long. Please review the format below:

  • Use 1-inch margins
  • Use 11 point sans-serif font (Calibri)
  • single-space your answers
  • Do not repeat the questions, just use Q1, Q2, etc. Use your own words–do not quote others. This is not a research paper so you are not required to cite references.
  • Be sure each answer you prepare responds to the question asked.
  • Limit your answers to one single-spaced page for each question. You may allocate this space as you wish in answering all eight questions in the examination. This means you can use more than one page to answer a question, but you can only have eight (8) total pages

For question 1, define and explain why it’s important, differentiate from a commodity purchase, and what has impacted you the most.

for question 2, you can use a table to compare and contrast and show a diagram of what each looks like.

for question 3, refer to the templates and choose one for a few that you like.

for question 4, use template 12

question 6, use template 13

Question 1. (8 points). The title of this course is IT Acquisition Management. Explain in YOUR own

words what that means? Why is it important? How is IT acquisition different from commodity

purchases? Finally, what have you learned this semester about IT Acquisition Management that has

impacted you the most?

Question 2. (14 points). State the main purpose of the following:

a. GANTT chart,

b. Flow chart, and

c. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Identify the similarities and differences among the three. In addition, present a pictorial diagram of

each and their differences. Note: You are free to use whichever tool you are familiar with—MS

Project, SmartDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc, to create the images or you can obtain them from the

Internet.

Question 3. (8 points). For your project, you have used twelve (12) of the IT Economic Corporation

Templates. Of all those templates, which have been most useful to you and why? If you need to refer

back to them, they can be found in weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, & 8 content area reference lists.

Question 4. (14 points). A pharmaceutical company is preparing a request for proposal to acquire IT

services to improve its pharmaceutical sales system. It plans to implement a tablet software

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application (“app”) for mobile access to view and update client accounts, update inventories, create

orders, communicate with clients and the home office, and view personal work schedules. It plans to

prepare a performance work statement (PWS) for the development of the app to include in the RFP.

Your Question/Task: Prepare the required outcomes and their performance standards, monitoring

methods, and incentives/disincentives that the pharmaceutical company might use in its PWS for the

request for proposal. Your required outcomes and associated information should apply to only the first

and second desired app functions, view and update client accounts and update inventories. Your

required outcomes and related information should reflect the best practices for performance work

statements and each should include performance standards, monitoring methods, and

incentives/disincentives, as required by IT Economics Corporation Template 12 (T12-PBWS.pdf

found in week 8).

Note: This is not a test of your knowledge of a pharmaceutical company’s sales activities but of your

ability to prepare a performance work statement. You can make reasonable assumptions regarding a

pharmaceutical company’s sales activities if necessary. The app functions in the question are

comparable to those used by many organizations outside of the pharmaceutical field.

Question 5. (14 points). Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) require that federal agencies use

performance-based contracting to the maximum extent possible for service contracts, including

contracts for the acquisition of IT services. Performance-based contracts rely on a performance work

statements (PWS). However, a prominent organization of former federal government acquisition

officials argues that the PWS works well with short-term, relatively simple service contracts, but “it is

unrealistic to ask agencies to specify services at time of contract award in clear, specific, objective,

and measurable terms when future needs are not fully known or understood, requirements and

priorities are expected to change during performance, and the circumstances and conditions of

performance are not reliably foreseeable.”

Your Question/Task: If you agree with this group’s position, explain why you believe the group is

correct in contending that the PWS is not suitable for long-term, complex IT service contracts. If you

disagree with this group’s position, explain why you believe the group is not correct and why a PWS is

suitable for long-term, complex IT service contracts.

Question 6. (14 points). Template 13, by IT Economics Corporation (T13-Evaluating Sources.pdf

found in Week 9), is an example of a matrix used for summarizing the results of evaluating proposals

received from IT services contractors. The template uses “adjectival” rating codes and brief

statements to summarize the evaluation results of each proposal from IT services contractors.

Your Question: What are the principal risks associated with using such a matrix and what do you

recommend to avoid, mitigate, or transfer each principal risk that you identify?

Question 7. (14 points). An organization is planning an IT acquisition strategy for a large and

complex project. It plans to outsource part of the solution implementation to an IT services contractor.

Prior to preparing a request for proposals, it must decide which solution implementation activities

should be performed by in-house staff and which should be performed by the IT service contractor.

Your Question/Task: What guidelines would you recommend for making the decisions regarding

which solution implementation activities should be performed by in-house staff and which should be

performed by the IT service contractor?

Question 8. (14 points). An IT services contractor generally tries to appoint the project manager that

is best suited to the customer and the project. In the case described below, the contractor appointed

one of its best project managers to manage a project under contract with an important client. Here is

the problem that the project manager encountered:

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The Case. An organization awarded a time and materials contract to a qualified IT services

contractor to develop software for analyzing large amounts of customer data and establishing

tailored reporting of the results for managers of lines of business. The project required 40 fulltime

analysts, designers, and programmers. Because of the importance of the project to both the

customer and the contractor, the contractor assigned a senior project manager who was known

for having excellent technical skills and excellent soft skills. After the project was under way for

several months, the project manager discovered that two team members had charged time to

the project for several three-to five day periods in which they did not work on the project. The

customer had no knowledge of this and counted the time in calculating the payments to the

contractor.

Your Question/Task: Given the circumstances of this case, what action should the project manager

take? Explain the reason(s) for your answer.