Instructions for Analysis Essay #2
Your essay must be at least 1500 words (approximately 2 pages long). Microsoft Word has a word count feature, and you can usually view the word count in the bar at the bottom of Word. If necessary, search Google for help on how to view the Word count in Microsoft Word.
Please write only in your own words. You are encouraged to read various sources to learn more about your information system, but due to the brief length of the essay, you are discouraged from directly quoting from your sources. Instead, explain what you learned from your research, and what you know from your own experience with the system, in your own words. Do not quote directly from your references, but do list the references you consulted in your research at the bottom of your essay.
In Analysis Essay #2, you will address the following:
1) a brief reminder of the name and purpose of your chosen information system,
2) server-side hardware requirements of your system,
3) server-side software requirements of your system,
4) client-side hardware requirements of your system,
5) client-side software requirements of your system,
6) competitive analysis of the system,
7) your recommendations for improving and enhancing your chosen information system
8) conclusion.
Begin with a brief paragraph reminding us of the full name of your information system and its primary purpose and uses. Do not copy this from your first essay, but briefly describe your system again in different words.
The next 2-3 paragraphs should address the positive and negative impacts your information system has on the users of the system. Positive impacts are benefits your information system has for the users. For business systems, this will include how it makes your business processes more effective and efficient. For home and personal systems, this will include how the system makes some task or tasks in your personal life more effective and efficient. Try to quantify some of the positive impacts in terms of savings of cost, time, and effort by the users, as compared to what the manual process of accomplishing the same tasks would be, if you did not have the computer-based information system.
Negative impacts may include overdependence on the information system. When there is a system outage, how does this impact the operations and productivity of your organization? Be sure to also discuss any contingency plans that the users of this system have for maintaining business continuity during system outages (for business systems) or for accomplishing the same tasks manually or via a different system (for home/personal systems).
In the rest of your essay, give at least 3 recommendations for improving your information system. This section of your essay should be at least 1 page long. Each recommendation should be at least one fully developed paragraph and should not just identify a problem with the system, but should offer a specific, concrete solution to that problem, along with a plan for how you would implement that solution. The types of recommendations I am looking for are improvements and enhancements to the computer-based information system itself. I am primarily looking for you to suggest new features and functions that could be added to the system to make it better. What additional functions would you like your information system to be able to do? I am looking for your own original ideas. Additional technical recommendations you could make include specific ways you would add additional back-up or redundancy capabilities, or specific hardware upgrades that might increase the speed of the system. Just make sure that each recommendation you make is for a technical improvement to the system itself, and not managerial or organizational recommendations, like additional training on the system. Also, be as specific as possible. For example, if you recommend that the layout of the systems graphical user interface be made more user-friendly, then describe exactly what you would change about the layout to improve the usability.
Your essay will automatically be checked for plagiarism by TurnItIn. There must be no more than 5% similarity to sources to receive credit for this assignment.
