Instructor’s Resource Manual For
Experiencing MIS Eighth Edition David M. Kroenke Randall J. Boyle Prepared by Roberta Roth
Kroenke/Boyle - Experiencing MIS 8th Ed - Instructor’s Manual
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AE-1
Application Exercises
Part 1 Chapter 1: Quality of Information with Excel AE1-1. The spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel file Ch01Ex01_E8e contains records of employee activity on special projects. Open this workbook and examine the data that you find in the three spreadsheets it contains. Assess the accuracy, relevancy, and sufficiency of this data to the following people and problems. a. You manage the Denver plant, and you want to know how much time your employees are spending on special projects. The answer to this question is given directly on the Denver worksheet, so this data is accurate, relevant, and sufficient for the purposes of the Denver plant manager. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) b. You manage the Reno plant, and you want to know how much time your employees are spending on special projects. The answer to this question is given directly on the Reno worksheet, so this data is accurate, relevant, and sufficient for the purposes of the Reno plant manager. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) c. You manage the Quota Computation project in Chicago, and you want to know how much time your employees have spent on that project. The project manager will have to manipulate the data on the Chicago worksheet to produce the answer of interest. The worksheet rows could be sorted by project, and then a sum computed of the hours worked for the Quota Computation rows. The data is sufficient, but must be manipulated to produce the relevant result, and because of that manipulation, the accuracy of the result might be questionable. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) d. You manage the Quota Computation project for all three plants, and you want to know the total time employees have spent on your project. This project manager will have considerable work to do to find the result needed. On each sheet, the worksheet rows will have to be sorted by project, a sum will have to be computed for the Quota Computation project, and then this sum will
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Kroenke/Boyle - Experiencing MIS 8th Ed - Instructor’s Manual
AE-2
have to be added to a total for all three plants. The data provided is sufficient to produce the desired result, but its relevancy is questionable because of the amount of effort required to find the answer of interest to the manager, and there is a significant risk of inaccuracy resulting from all the manipulations that are required. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) e. You manage the Quota Computation project for all three plants, and you want to know the total labor cost for all employees on your project. This information is not available at all, because there is no data regarding labor cost in the workbook. Therefore, although the data provided may be accurate and somewhat relevant, it is not sufficient to produce the desired result. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) f. You manage the Quota Computation project for all three plants, and you want to know how the labor-hour total for that project compares to the labor-hour totals for the other special projects. This result can be found with some effort. If the manager produced the answer in part d above, then this can be subtracted from the total hours worked on all projects for all three plants to find the total hours worked on all other special projects. The data provided is sufficient to produce the desired result, but its relevancy is questionable because of the amount of effort required to find the answer of interest to the manager, and there is a significant risk of inaccuracy resulting from all the manipulations that are required. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) g. What conclusions can you make from this exercise? The data in the workbook do provide us with the ability to answer questions about labor hours worked on special projects, so the data is sufficient. As the data is grouped on individual sheets by plant, it becomes more difficult to answer questions that span more than one plant. So, the data’s relevance decreases because we can’t find answers without some work. As more manipulation has to be done to find answers to questions, there is more of a chance of introducing errors in the answers, thus lowering the accuracy of the data. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
Chapter 1: Comparing Information from Excel and Access AE1-2. The database in the Microsoft Access file Ch01Ex02_E8e contains the same records of employee activity on special projects as in Application Exercise 1-1. Before going any further, open that database and view the records in the Employee Hours table. .
Kroenke/Boyle - Experiencing MIS 8th Ed - Instructor’s Manual
AE-3
a. Eight queries have been created that process this data in different ways. Using the criteria of accuracy, relevancy, and sufficiency select the single query that is most appropriate for the information requirements in Application Exercise AE1, parts a–f. If no query meets the need, explain why. ▪
You manage the Denver plant, and you want to know how much time your employees are spending on special projects. The Denver Sum query provides a direct answer to this question. It is accurate, relevant, and sufficient. The Plant Sum query also contains the answer to this question along with answers for the other two plants. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
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You manage the Reno plant, and you want to know how much time your employees are spending on special projects. There is no query that answers this question directly. However, the Plant Sum query includes the answer to this question. It is accurate and sufficient, but adds some information that is not relevant (sums for the Denver and Chicago plants). (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
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You manage the Quota Computation project in Chicago, and you want to know how much time your employees have spent on that project. The Sorted Query 1 query can be used to find the answer to this question. This query lists the hours worked by employees in the Chicago plant on the Quota Computation project. These hours can be manually added to find the total hours spent on the Quota Computation project by Chicago plant employees. The data is sufficient, but must be manipulated to produce the relevant result, and because of that manipulation, the accuracy of the result might be questionable. Because there is unneeded information in the query, the data is more than sufficient to answer the question. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
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You manage the Quota Computation project for all three plants, and you want to know the total time your employees have spent on your project. None of the queries provide a direct answer for this question. Sorted Query 1, Sorted Query 2, or Sorted Query 3 can be used to compute the answer, but the manager must add specific individual rows in the query to compute the result. The data is sufficient, but must be manipulated to produce the relevant result, and because of that manipulation, the accuracy of the result might be questionable. Because there is unneeded information in the query, the data is more than sufficient to answer the question. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
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Kroenke/Boyle - Experiencing MIS 8th Ed - Instructor’s Manual
AE-4
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You manage the Quota Computation project for all three plants, and you want to know the total labor cost for all employees on your project. This information is not available at all, as there is no data regarding labor cost in the database. Therefore, although the data provided may be accurate and somewhat relevant, it is not sufficient to produce the desired result. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
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You manage the Quota Computation project for all three plants, and you want to know how the labor hour total for that project compares to the labor hour totals for the other special projects. This result can be found with some effort. If the manager produced the total hours worked in all plants on the Quota Computation project, then this can be subtracted from the total hours worked on all projects for all three plants to find the total hours worked on all other special projects (found by adding the three rows in the Plant Sum query). The data provided is sufficient to produce the desired result, but its relevancy is questionable because of the amount of effort required to find the answer of interest to the manager, and there is a significant risk of inaccuracy resulting from all the manipulations that are required. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
b. What conclusions can you make from this exercise? Queries can be formulated to answer specific questions quickly and easily, but should be constructed to produce the exact answer to the question, rather than expecting the user to do additional manual computations to find the necessary answer. In addition, queries should be given meaningful names so that the user can easily determine which to use to answer questions. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology) c. Comparing your experiences on these two projects, what are the advantages and disadvantages of spreadsheets and databases? Queries in databases can be constructed to produce specific answers, and are easy to use. When a query does not exist to give a needed result, finding the result through manual computation is harder than when using a spreadsheet because you don’t have access to the spreadsheet’s computational capabilities. (LO: 4, Learning Outcome: Explain how information systems can be used to assist in decision making, AACSB: Information Technology)
AE1-3. In this project, you will look at statistics related to information systems jobs. For several years, the demand for IT workers has been increasing. So have average annual wages for IT workers. Projections for future job demand and salary growth are also well above average.
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