MBA 683 E-Business Technology --

Assignments
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Assignments

This section provides a general overview of assignments and the course project.  Specific assignment information will be found in the Class Schedule and the page for each assignment.

Guest Speakers

Guest speakers will discuss their experience with e-business.  You will learn more if you are prepared to ask relevant questions.  Please review the background information and prepare questions in advance for each guest speaker.

Individual Assignments

There will be a series of individual assignments designed to build Web authoring and design skills.  It is important that you do your own work in order to build these skills.

Deliverables will be defined with each assignment.

Vendor Evaluations

Each team will write up and present two vendor evaluations.  Your evaluation should include:

What products or services does the company offer? Focus on the topic given and exclude other products or services.
Why would a company want these products/services?  What are the benefits?
Who are their major customers for this product/service?
How much does it cost and how long would it take to install?
How does your vendor compare with the other vendors listed in the assignment?

Your deliverables include:

An in class presentation on the vendor and their products.
A short paper, 5 pages max.

High quality evaluations will include information from reviews, analyst reports, customer comments, and other sources.

Course Project

The course project will give you an opportunity to integrate what you have learned in this course, apply these concepts in a realistic setting, and increase your knowledge of e-business technology.  

You will:

Design an interactive service for the Internet (or a company Intranet) that includes a database component.
Build a working prototype demonstrating key features of the service.
Test your prototype for usability.
Prepare the service specifications.
Propose your service for approval and funding.

You will present your proposal to the class and receive their feedback that you may incorporate into your final paper and the actual client presentation.

Pick a real organization for your project where you have access to the management and their cooperation.  Identify a specific problem or opportunity for a new online service.  This could include a new product or service offering, support channel, supplier integration, etc.

Write a proposal where you:

Describe and analyze the problem or opportunity
Propose a specific service solution complete with:
A systems plan showing how this service fits in the overall environment and identifying the interfaces to other systems.
Scenarios (or Use Cases) describing how users will interact with the system.
A Prototype demonstrating part of the user interface capability.
The Data Model specifying the database structure and legal transactions for at least the part of the service implemented by the prototype.
Usability test results for your prototype.
Identify ways in which this service will impact the organization's profits
Address any risks or concerns including security, reliability, scalability.

Write the paper from the perspective of a consultant addressing a specific person in the client organization.  Names and company information may be disguised.  Assume that your reader has other pressing concerns and must be convinced to pay attention and take action.

Each report must include an executive summary that delivers key observations, recommendations, and points on a single page.  Reports should be no more than 20 pages, plus attachments if required.

Key project dates are:

February 8: Brainstorm possible topics in class.
February 15: Submit a one page summary identifying the client, service, team and plan.  Topics are subject to approval.
March 22: Submit a one page Status Report summarizing completed tasks, remaining tasks, problems encountered, and solutions.
April 26: Usability Testing Festival, teams test their prototypes on classmates.
May 3, 10: Present to class and get feedback.
May 10, 17: Final report documents due.

Written Assignment Guidelines

Label the first page with the course number, the assignment, the due date, team number (for team assignments) and your name or the names of all team members (in alphabetical order by last name).  
Subsequent pages must include the assignment, your name(s), and page numbers.
Organize your ideas into a structure that suits the assignment and emphasizes the points you want to make.
Use American business English with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation as if you were writing for a consulting client. 
Neatness counts.  All assignments are expected to be legible with 12-point type. 
Papers should be stapled or fastened with metal binder clips.  Please, no paperclips, notebooks, bindings, report covers, etc.

Class Web

All written assignments and presentation materials will be posted to the class Web site for the benefit of other students.  Please e-mail assignments before class and follow the file naming convention described below.

File Names

Please use this standard file naming convention for assignments that you submit:

letter t as in technology
due date as MMDD
hyphen
team number for team assignments or last name-first name for individual assignments
standard Microsoft Office extension: doc, htm, ppt, xls, etc.

A Word document from team 2 due on September 1 would be t0901-02.doc

It is also helpful if you update the Title and Subject properties for Microsoft Office documents.  You can access these fields by going to the File menu and selecting Properties and the Summary tab.

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© 2001 by Chuck Ehrlich, all rights reserved.  Comments to webmaster.  Updated on January 24, 2001.