Fluent Essays

Question 1 : 1. Which data fields will allow you to perform descriptive analysis? 2. Describe the data fields and questions. Is the survey and individual questions well designed? What critiques do you have about the survey?  3. What additional data cleaning or transformations would you need to perform in order to utilize some of the fields that include text such as “Is Sushi one of your favorite food? Yes / No” 4. Review the survey item #4 (For each of the following types of food please rate how strongly you agree that it is delicious). Note the results in the data file provided. Are the results in text form or numeric format? How would you transform the data into a form that would allow for additional data analysis (requiring numbers) since the data is already collected? 5. Are there other survey tools (other than survey monkey) that would allow you to ‘ code ’ your data in advance, making post-collection analysis a bit easier? For example it might be easier to have a data file that has a numeric rating of 5 in the file for every response that is strongly agree instead of the text data strongly agree. Do some searches, and share what you are able find.  6. What are the major differences between Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets? 7. How does Tableau and Power BI differ from Excel? 8. How do data analysis (statistical software packages) such as SAS, SPSS, Stata differ from Excel? 9. Based on your searches and research, which data analysis software are the most well known or widely used? QUESTION 2: National Financial Services Case Study You have been hired as a management consultant to help NFS develop IT planning and governance processes using the information presented in the case and the course materials. In your report, you will recommend (1) an IT governance structure and (2) an annual IT planning process. Present your recommendations to NFS in the form of a  brief  report. Formatting: · Use 11 or 12 point font with 1” margins. · Citations (if used) should follow APA format. · Report sections - USE THESE HEADINGS: . Introduction . Background 2. Summarize the specific problems at NFS. 2. Based on the current situation, explain where NFS falls on the Business-IT Maturity Model (Figure 8.1). . IT Support 3. Given your recommendations below, briefly summarize the support and activities that the NFS IT organization should provide. . IT Governance 4. Recommend governance structure/processes for IT spending and benefits delivery at all levels. 4. Include a method for project categorization and prioritization. . IT Planning Process 5. Recommend an annual IT planning process that provides transparency and accountability for all types of IT spending and that creates a strategically aligned development portfolio. 5. Include the use of IT business cases as part of the process and recommend required components of business cases. . Conclusion 6. Explain the value of implementing your recommendations in terms of where it will put NFS on the Business-IT Maturity Model. Respondent ID,Collector ID,Start Date,End Date,IP Address,Email Address,First Name,Last Name,Custom Data 1,Please describe your favorite style of food?,Is Sushi one of your favorite food?,Which style of food is your favorite?,For each of the following types of food please rating how strongly you agree that it delicious. 1=Strongly DISAGREE; 5=Strongly AGREE,,,,,,,What is your favorite food type in order of favorite to least favorite?,,,,,,,,Rate how much you love Barbecue style food on a 0 - 100 Scale.,Rate how many times youve eaten each of these styles of food in the last 3 months.,,,,,,,,What is your age? ,,,,,,,,,Open-Ended Response,Response,Response,Steakhouse,Chinese,Italian,Mexican,Greek,Barbecue,Indian,Steakhouse,Chinese,Italian,Mexican,Greek,Barbecue,Indian,Vegetarian / Vegan,Open-Ended Response,Italian,Mexican,Chinese,Indian,Vegetarian/Vegan,Sushi,Greek,Barbecue,Open-Ended Response 12007863383,392708476,09/21/2020 08:49:36 PM,09/21/2020 09:00:16 PM,73.36.87.99,,,,,traditional Mexican food,Yes,Mexican,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Agree,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,7,4,6,8,3,5,2,1,61,0,More than 4,1,0,0,0,0,1, 12007855430,392708476,09/21/2020 08:50:26 PM,09/21/2020 08:55:37 PM,73.36.181.50,,,,,South-Indian food I am really fond of along with sweets,No,Indian,Agree,Agree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,8,3,2,5,6,4,1,7,80,More than 4,More than 4,More than 4,More than 4,More than 4,0,More than 4,More than 4, 12007855147,392708476,09/21/2020 08:51:20 PM,09/21/2020 08:55:27 PM,73.111.32.131,,,,,Mexican,No,Mexican,Agree,Agree,Agree,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Disagree,3,4,5,1,6,2,8,7,100,2,More than 4,1,0,0,1,1,3, 12007853176,392708476,09/21/2020 08:50:16 PM,09/21/2020 08:54:16 PM,67.184.137.208,,,,,South Indian Vegetarian Food,No,Vegetarian / Vegan,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Agree,Strongly Agree,8,6,4,5,7,3,2,1,90,3,0,0,More than 4,More than 4,0,0,3, 12007850863,392708476,09/21/2020 08:49:55 PM,09/21/2020 08:52:55 PM,67.175.94.213,,,,,Italian,No,Italian,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,4,3,1,5,6,2,7,8,100,More than 4,More than 4,4,0,0,1,0,4, 12007850829,392708476,09/21/2020 08:49:34 PM,09/21/2020 08:52:53 PM,73.246.197.34,,,,,Mexican,Yes,Mexican,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Strongly Agree,Agree,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,4,3,5,1,6,2,7,8,90,0,4,1,0,0,0,0,3, 12007850735,392708476,09/21/2020 08:50:01 PM,09/21/2020 08:52:50 PM,108.252.132.134,,,,,I enjoy comfort food, but mostly mexican food.,No,Mexican,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,Strongly Agree,Disagree,Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,4,2,6,1,8,3,7,5,85,1,More than 4,3,2,2,0,0,3, 12007850236,392708476,09/21/2020 08:50:06 PM,09/21/2020 08:52:33 PM,45.20.169.61,,,,,italian,No,Italian,Agree,Agree,Strongly Agree,Strongly Agree,Disagree,Strongly Agree,Neither Agree Nor Disagree,2,3,1,4,6,5,7,8,94,More than 4,More than 4,4,0,0,1,1,More than 4, IT Investment at National Financial Services (NFS) Carol Johnson checked her makeup and then glanced at her watch for the tenth time. Almost 10:45. Showtime. As National Financial Services (NFS) first female CIO, she knew she had to be better than good when she met with the companys senior executives for the first time to justify her IT budget. They had shown their faith in her three months ago by giving her this position, when NFSs longest serving senior vice president of IT had had to retire early due to ill health. But women were just beginning to crack the glass ceiling at the bank, and she knew there was a lot more riding on this presentation than just this budget. That said, the budget situation wasnt great. As she well knew from her earlier experience in more subordinate roles, the CIO had the unenviable task of justifying the companys $500M budget to a group of executives who only saw the expense of IT, not its value. This was especially frustrating because NFSs IT management was excellent, when looked at by any standard. NFSs IT group consisted of almost 7,000 professionals who followed all the recommended standards, such as CMM, CMMI, ISO9001, and ITIL, to ensure that its IT processes were efficient, cost effective, and on par with, if not higher than, industry standards. It had been certified at a minimum Level 3 CMMI and was an industry leader in delivering projects on time, on budget, and in scope. But in the past few years, NFS executives had implemented rigorous cost containment measures for IT, leaving the CIO to struggle to be all things to all people. They want innovation, they need reliability and stability, and we are required by law to meet ever more stringent government regulations, but theyre still nickel-and-diming us, Carol thought indignantly. She envied the banks business units that could clearly show profit-and-loss statements, and their ability to make strategic decisions about what to do with the excess capital they often had. In her world, business strategies changed regularly and thus IT’s goals had to as well. But strategies were not linked to budgets, which were typically set six to nine months in advance. As a result, IT was always struggling to keep up and find the resources to be flexible. She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face, and pushed open the door to the executive conference room to face her colleagues and her future. The room was full of suits- a few females here and there, but mostly tough, middle-age males who expected answers and action. Following a few pleasantries about how she was adjusting to her new role, they got down to business. The thing were most concerned about, Carol, said Bob Harper, NFSs CEO, is we simply dont see where were getting value from our IT investments. Theres no proof in the bottom line. Nick Harris, NFSs CFO added, Every year we approve hundreds of millions of dollars for IT projects, which are supposedly based on sound cost-benefit analyses, but the benefits never materialize. Heads around the room began nodding. Carols mind was whirling. What did they really want from her? Pulling her thoughts together quickly, she responded. If youre looking for IT to tell you which projects will deliver the most business value, or if you want me to monitor the business units after the projects they asked for are implemented to see if they are delivering value, youre asking me to do something thats well beyond IT s scope of expertise. We are not the experts in your business case, and it shouldn’t be up to us to monitor how you use the technology we give you. Ill take full responsibility for the quality of our work, its timely delivery, and its cost, but we really have to work together to ensure were investing in the right projects and delivering benefits. “What do you recommend then? asked Harry Patterson, head of Retail Banking. I think we need an IT Investment Committee that I would co-lead jointly with you, Nick, Carol said while looking pointedly at the CFO. We need a strong partnership to explore what can be done and who should be responsible for doing it. Finance is the only place where all the money comes together in this organization. Although I have to pull together an IT budget every year, it is contingent on what each business unit wants to spend. We dont really have an enterprise IT budgeting process that looks across our business silos to see if what were spending is good for NFS as a whole. Nick looked thoughtful. You could be on to something here, Carol. Lets see if we can figure this out together. The rest of the meeting passed in a blur, and before Carol knew it, she and Nick were trying to identify whom they should assign to help them look at their IT investment challenges. These were significant. First, there was inconsistent alignment of the total IT development budget with enterprise strategies. We have enterprise strategies but no way of linking them to enterprise spending,” Carol pointed out. IT budgets were allocated according to the size of the business unit. Smaller lines of business had smaller IT budgets than larger ones. “For some small business units like ours, government mandated projects eat up our entire IT budget, complained Cathy Benson, senior vice president of Business Banking Product Management. This made it extremely difficult to allocate IT resources strategically- say, for example, to grow a smaller business unit into a larger one. Second, business units made project approvals without addressing cross-unit synergies. Looking at the projects IT had underway revealed that the company had eighteen separate projects in different parts of the business to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. Weve got to be reinventing the wheel with some of these, complained Ian Ha, senior director of NFSs Risk and Compliance department. Third, although business cases were required for all major projects, their formats were inconsistent, and the data provided to justify the costs lacked rigor. There seems to be a lot of gaming going on here, obse1ved Michael Cranston, director of Financial Strategy. “A lot of these numbers dont make sense. How come weve never asked the business sponsors of these projects to take ownership for the business benefits they claim when they ask for the money in the first place? Fourth, once a project was approved, everyone focused on on-time, on-budget delivery. No one ever asked whether a project was still necessary or was still on track to deliver the benefits anticipated. Do we ever stop projects once they have started or review the business case in-flight? mused Nick. Finally, no one appeared to be accountable for delivering these benefits once an IT project was developed and implemented; rather, everyone just heaved a great sigh of relief and moved on to the next project. Because the total IT budget for new development work was allocated by business unit, the result was a prioritization process that worked reasonably well at the business unit level but not for NFS as a whole. Enterprise executives created enterprise strategies, but they didnt get involved in implementing them in the business units, which left the business unit heads to prioritize initiatives within their own silo. In prioritization meetings, leaders would argue passionately for their own particular cause, focusing on their own needs, not on NFSs overall strategies. We really need to align this process with our enterprise priorities, said Carol. Nick agreed. “There’s got to be a process to bring all our investment decisions for new projects together so we can compare them across business units and adjust our resourcing accordingly. IT Investment at National Financial Services (NFS) Looking deeper into these matters revealed that there was more to IT spending than simply prioritizing projects, however. Almost 60 percent of the banks IT budget was spent not on strategic new development projects but on maintaining existing systems, interfaces, and data. Another 20 percent was work that had to be done to meet the demands of government legislation or the banks regulators. How is this possible?” asked Sam. No wonder were not getting much bang for our buck, Carol exclaimed. “Every time we develop or acquire a new system without getting rid of something else, we add to our application clutter. When we continually add new systems while holding IT budgets and head counts relatively flat, more and more of our resources have to be devoted to supporting these systems. New systems meant new interfaces between and among existing systems, additional data and dependencies and increasing risk that something could go wrong. “We’ve tried to get the business units interested in sponsoring an initiative to reduce duplication and simplify our applications portfolio, but theyre not interested in what they call IT housekeeping. They dont see how dealing with this will help them in the long run. I guess we havent explained it to them very well. Brenda Liu, senior director of IT Infrastructure, added, We also have to keep our IT environment up to date. Vendors are continually making upgrades to software, and there are also license fees to consider. And, as you know, we have to build in extra reliability and redundancy for our critical systems and data, as well as privacy protection for our banking customers. Its an expensive process. I get all this, said Cathy, “ but why cant you explain it to us properly? How can you just expect us to accept that 80 percent of your budget is a black box that doesnt need justification? Although every dime you spend may be critical to this company, the fact remains that ITs lack of transparency is damaging its internal credibility with the business. Round and round the issues they went. Over the next two months, Carol, Nick, and their team hammered away trying to solve them. Eventually, they came up with a set of five principles on which their new IT investment process would be based: 1. Alignment of the IT development portfolio with enterprise strategies; 2. Rigor and common standards around IT planning and business casing; 3. Accountability in both business and IT for delivering value; 4. Transparency at all levels and stages of development; 5. Collaboration and cross-group synergies in all IT work. In their team update to the banks executive committee, Carol and Nick wrote, Our vision is for a holistic view of our IT spending that will allow us to direct our resources where they will have the greatest impact. We propose to increase rigor and discipline in business casing and benefits tracking so NFS can invest with confidence in IT. The result will be strategic partnerships between IT and business units based on trust, leading us to surprise and delight our customers and employees and amaze our competitors. With the executive committees blessing, the IT Investment Office was created to design and implement a detailed investment optimization process that could be implemented throughout the bank in time for the next budget cycle. Cathy Benson was named its new director, reporting to Nick. Speaking to her staff after the announcement, Carol stated, I really believe that getting this work out of IT and into the business will be critical for this process. We need to make the decision-making process clearer and more collaborative. This will help us learn how to jointly make better decisions for the enterprise. With the hand-off from IT officially in place, Cathy and Nick knew they had to move quickly. “We’ve got three months before the next budget cycle begins, said Nick. “You’ve got to make it real by then. Ill back you all the way, but you’re going to have to find some way to deal with the business unit heads. Theyre not going to like having their autonomy for decision-making taken away from them. And you have to remember they need some flexibility to do work thats important to them. Cathy nodded. She had already heard some of the negative rumors about the process and knew she was going to have to be tough if it was going to be successful and not torpedoed during its implementation. Calling her project team together for its first meeting, she summarized their challenge. We have to design and implement three interrelated practices: a thorough and rigorous method of project categorization and prioritization, comprehensive and holistic governance of IT spending and benefits delivery at all levels, and an annual IT planning process that provides transparency and accountability for all types of IT spending and which creates an integrated and strategically aligned development portfolio. Then we have to roll it out across the organization. The change management is going to be massive. Now, who has any ideas about what to do next?