Assignment 6 (SAD 1)

Consider the following dialogue between a systems professional, John Juan, and a manager of a department targeted for a new information system, Peter Pedro:

"Juan: The way to go about the analysis is to first examine the old system, such as reviewing key documents and observing the workers perform their tasks. Then we can determine which aspects are working well and which should be preserved.

Pedro: We have been through these types of projects before and what always ends up happening is that we do not get the new system we are promised; we get a modified version of the old system.

Juan: Well, I can assure you that will not happen this time. We just want a thorough understanding of what is working well and what isn’t.

Pedro: I would feel much more comfortable if we first started with a list of our requirements. We should spend some time up-front determining exactly what we want the system to do for my department. Then you systems people can come in and determine what portions to salvage if you wish. Just don’t constrain us to the old system."

Required:

a.Obviously these two workers have different views on how the systems analysis phase should be conducted. Comment on whose position you sympathize with the most.
b.What method would you propose they take? Why?


In this scenario, we realized that both workers have different views on how they want to develop their new system. Juan want to study first the old system so that they can just see the strengths and weakness of the old system they have while Pedro wants to start a new system without referring to the old system they have.

So if i am at the one of the workers, i am favor with the idea of Juan which is examining and studying first the old system that we have before making move to a new system because in has many advantage for me. If i will the study first the old system i will know the ways or the algorithm of the old system it is now easy for me to develop a new version of its system because you can just rely with the useful codes or features in the system. If i can understand it well, i guess i can come up a good idea about how to upgrade the old system so that it could be user friendly, good security and competitive system in its competitors.

I agree that it is hard to study an old system that you dont have any idea on it. It is time consuming and always a risk that you can't come up with a new system because of some reasons. But for me , my decisions will depend on the answer of the developer(always depend on the skills of the developer), if he truly says that he can come up with a good system after studying it with a minimum time he need so i will take the risk.

What method would you propose they take?why?

So the method that I would propose to them that they will take is the method of a system development process? For me the method depends on what really the management wants in order to make the system. So what are the steps? There are steps in creating a system, so in order for them to develop a system they should follow some protocols in developing a system. So there are steps in developing a system, which is the planning, implementation, testing, documenting, deployment, and maintenance. So these are the steps in system development process. So first things first is what is its definition a software development process is a structure imposed on the development of a software product. Synonyms include software life cycle and software process. There are several models for such processes, each describing approaches to a variety of tasks or activities that take place during the process. The reason why I added the definition is that they can understand what my point is, or shall we say it is an overview in creating or developing a system. So to start, the first step you need to do is to plan; the important task in creating a software product is extracting the requirements or requirements analysis. Customers typically have an abstract idea of what they want as an end result, but not what software should do. Incomplete, ambiguous, or even contradictory requirements are recognized by skilled and experienced software engineers at this point. Frequently demonstrating live code may help reduce the risk that the requirements are incorrect. Once the general requirements are gleaned from the client, an analysis of the scope of the development should be determined and clearly stated. This is often called a scope document. Certain functionality may be out of scope of the project as a function of cost or as a result of unclear requirements at the start of development. If the development is done externally, this document can be considered a legal document so that if there are ever disputes, any ambiguity of what was promised to the client can be clarified. So planning is short for SPMP (Software Project Management Plan). SPMP is a technique in which making the planning phase feasible. As you acquired the SPMP that is the time you can proceed to the analysis phase. So part of this is step are the analysis phase in a system development. So the requirements on analysis phase are the SRS or (Software Requirements Specification). Here you are going to identify all the information that is going to be included in your system. An example would be the system features of your system, the functional and non-functional requirements of your system. So if you are done in doing the SRS the next thing you should do is design. So these are some of the things you need to do in order to attain what are the goals that are needed to be accomplished. So if you already finished planning on what are the things you need to do, then you can proceed to the next step which is implementation, testing and documenting. Implementation is the part of the process where software engineers actually program the code for the project. Software testing is an integral and important part of the software development process. This part of the process ensures that bugs are recognized as early as possible. Documenting the internal design of software for the purpose of future maintenance and enhancement is done throughout development. This may also include the authoring of an API, be it external or internal. Then, deployment starts after the code is appropriately tested, is approved for release and sold or otherwise distributed into a production environment. Software Training and Support is important because a large percentage of software projects fail because the developers fail to realize that it doesn't matter how much time and planning a development team puts into creating software if nobody in an organization ends up using it. People are often resistant to change and avoid venturing into an unfamiliar area, so as a part of the deployment phase, it is very important to have training classes for new clients of your software. Maintenance and enhancing software to cope with newly discovered problems or new requirements can take far more time than the initial development of the software. It may be necessary to add code that does not fit the original design to correct an unforeseen problem or it may be that a customer is requesting more functionality and code can be added to accommodate their requests. It is during this phase that customer calls come in and you see whether your testing was extensive enough to uncover the problems before customers do. If the labor cost of the maintenance phase exceeds 25% of the prior-phases' labor cost, then it is likely that the overall quality, of at least one prior phase, is poor. In that case, management should consider the option of rebuilding the system (or portions) before maintenance cost is out of control. Bug Tracking System tools are often deployed at this stage of the process to allow development teams to interface with customer/field teams testing the software to identify any real or perceived issues. These software tools, both open source and commercially licensed, provide a customizable process to acquire, review, acknowledge, and respond to reported issues. The other technique that is crucial in developing a system is that you need to identify your model. There are many examples of models such as waterfall, agile, and extreme programming. But also there are other model that is also needs to be considered. Iterative development prescribes the construction of initially small but ever larger portions of a software project to help all those involved to uncover important issues early before problems or faulty assumptions can lead to disaster. Iterative processes are preferred by commercial developers because it allows a potential of reaching the design goals of a customer who does not know how to define what they want. Agile software development processes are built on the foundation of iterative development. To that foundation they add a lighter, more people-centric viewpoint than traditional approaches. Agile processes use feedback, rather than planning, as their primary control mechanism. The feedback is driven by regular tests and releases of the evolving software. Extreme Programming (XP) is the best-known iterative process. In XP, the phases are carried out in extremely small (or "continuous") steps compared to the older, "batch" processes. The (intentionally incomplete) first pass through the steps might take a day or a week, rather than the months or years of each complete step in the Waterfall model. First, one writes automated tests, to provide concrete goals for development. Next is coding (by a pair of programmers), which is complete when all the tests pass, and the programmers can't think of any more tests that are needed. Design and architecture emerge out of refactoring, and come after coding. Design is done by the same people who do the coding. (Only the last feature — merging design and code — is common to all the other agile processes.) The incomplete but functional system is deployed or demonstrated for (some subset of) the users (at least one of which is on the development team). At this point, the practitioners start again on writing tests for the next most important part of the system. The waterfall model shows a process, where developers are to follow these steps in order:

1. Requirements specification (AKA Verification or Analysis)
2. Design
3. Construction (AKA implementation or coding)
4. Integration
5. Testing and debugging (AKA validation)
6. Installation (AKA deployment)
7. Maintenance

Formal Methods:

The complexity of software that will be embedded in new aircraft and spacecraft has outpaced the capabilities of our current verification and certification methods. Software performs safety- and mission-critical functions on these
platforms, and correct operation is essential. Verification and certification based on manual reviews, process constraints, and testing are proving too expensive for even current products, let alone advanced software-based systems. Traditional method scannot verify the correctness of applications such as adaptive control for upset recovery of aircraft, intelligent control of space craft, and control software for advanced military and unmanned aircraft (UAVs) operating in commercial airspace. Unless safety-critical embedded software can be developed
and verified with less cost and effort – while still satisfying the highest reliability requirements – these new capabilities may never reach the market. Honeywell has recognized this challenge and has an active research program in advanced software development and verification tools and methodologies. Over the last 5 years, Formal Methods has emerged as a key component in the development and verification of the next generation of safetycritical systems.

Formal Methods

Formal Methods is the use of ideas and techniques from mathematics and formal logic to specify and reason about computing systems to increase design assurance and eliminate defects. Formal Methods tools allow comprehensive analysis of requirements and design and complete exploration of system behavior, including fault conditions. Formal Methods provides a disciplined approach to analyzing complex safetycritical systems. The benefits of using Formal Methods include:

Product-focused measure of correctness. The use of Formal Methods provides an objective measure of the correctness of a system, as opposed to current process quality measures.

Early detection of defects. Formal Methods can be applied to the earliest design artifacts, thereby leading to earlier detection and elimination of design defects and associated
late cycle rework. Guarantees of correctness. Unlike testing, formal analysis tools such as model checkers consider all possible execution paths through the system. If there is any way to reach a fault condition, a model checker will find it. In a multi-threaded system where concurrency is an issue, formal analysis can explore all possible interleavings and event orderings.. This level of coverage is impossible to achieve through testing.

Analytical approach to complexity.

The analytical nature of Formal Methods is better suited for verification of complex behaviors than testing alone. Provably correct abstractions can be used to bound the behavioral space of systems with adaptive or non-deterministic behaviors. Formal Methods can also be used to perform “what-if” analyses to study the effects of proposed system changes. Though the basic techniques have been under development world-wide for over two decades, they have just reached the maturity at which, in combination with increased processor speeds and cheaper memory, they can be used to address realworld systems.

Honeywell’s Experience

Honeywell has developed a wide array of capabilities in the application of Formal Methods to safety-critical systems. We can draw upon our expertise with many different Formal Methods technologies to choose the right tools and level of
abstraction for each verification task. Honeywell’s strength lies in our ability to apply this expertise to real systems based on our deep understanding of the aerospace domain, requirements for safety-critical systems, and actual development processes. Examples of how we have applied existing Formal Methods tools and developed new ones
include:
Source code: Source code is frequently the only complete design artifact available for verification. Therefore, analysis of source code is an important capability. We have found explicit-state model checkers to be the best tools for verifying source code. We are currently developing automated tools for generating verification models from source code and are using this approach to verify the time partitioning guarantees in Honeywell’s Deos™ real-time operating system. Deos is a key element of the Primus Epic avionics suite and was implemented in C++, incorporating many advanced features such as dynamic creation and deletion of processes and threads, slack time reclamation, and aperiodic interrupts. While no test case can directly check system level properties like time partitioning, we have been able to verify this property using the SPIN model checker. High integrity communication protocols: When high-level requirements documents are available, critical properties of high-integrity communication protocols can be analyzed using Formal Methods. In our verification of the synchronization protocol of the ASCB-D bus used in Primus Epic, we derived the model from textual design specifications. The verification proved that the protocol achieves synchronization of the timing frames within the required 200 msec start-up period, irrespective of the component start-up order, various bus faults, or clock drift. Control flow diagrams: Control flow diagrams in
Simulink™ are a common design representation in avionics control systems. We have found that symbolic model checkers capturing the synchronous transition structure of these designs are best suited for their verification. We are working on tools to automatically generate models from block diagrams such as a triplex sensor voter design. This redundancy management algorithm monitors three independent sensors, each with its own self-check validity flag. The output of the algorithm is a single sensor output and a validity flag computed from the inputs. We have verified that the algorithm computes the correct output and is tolerant to sensor faults, noise transients, and small differences in sensor measurements. Real-time scheduling: The MetaH Architectural Description Language was developed by Honeywell for specifying realtime embedded systems. The specifications include information about configurations of tasks, their message and event connections, information about how these objects are mapped onto a specified hardware architecture, and information about timing behaviors and requirements, and
partitioning and safety behaviors and requirements. We developed hybrid verification tools for real-time, faulttolerant,
high-assurance software and hardware architectures specified in the MetaH language. Dense time linear hybrid
automata models are generated automatically through instrumentation of the source code. The models result from the
execution of the instrumented code during testing. Properties analyzed using this approach include schedulability and
deadline satisfaction. We used this approach to analyze the portion of the MetaH real-time executive that implements uni-processor task scheduling, time partitioning, and error handling. Nine defects were discovered in the course of the verification. Of these, three defects were almost impossible to detect through testing because multiple, carefully-timed events were required to produce erroneous behavior.

sources: http://www51.honeywell.com/aero/technology/common/documents/formal-methods.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process

Assignment 8 (MIS 2)

Going to the future....I was hired in a company and given the task to develop a new strategic planning in the company. I was invited in a meeting to discuss the direction of the company, and give me the favor to ask some questions that could me making a new strategic planning.. So i guess here are some questions i want to ask to them...

1. What is the vision and mission, objectives of the company?Explain.

*Of course, I have to ask this question to them. Why? Simply because if I have to make a Strategic Information Systems Plan for a company, I have to know what the company or the business wants to attain so that I can also align it with the strategic plan that I am going to make. The strategic plan would be no use if what the plan that I put in it has no connection with the company’s vision, mission and goals.

2. Give the report about the company current status in the market, how does it run.

*Enable for me to know if it is good in the market, is it going up or down. The performance in operating of the company. If the personnel of the company is loyal, making no anomalies or whatever they are doing. The status of the inflow and outflow of money, it is profitable or not.

3. Give the SWOT and STEEP analysis of the company.

*Discussing about the strength, weakness etc. of the company. So that the company can easily identify the solutions, and the weakness of the company be minimize or be shift to be its strength. How the company operates in its social, they contribute to the community or they not.

3. For you, what are the critical success factors and core competencies of the company?

*Critical success factors (CSF’s), as we discussed from previous assignments, are the critical factors or activities required for ensuring the success of your business. These have been used significantly to present or identify a few key factors that organizations should focus on to be successful.
If the officers could point out to me what the critical success factors of their company are, then it would be easier for me to formulate a strategic information systems plan that could maximize the output of the company by means of information technology.

4. The company strategic plan?

*By this question, the answer I am looking for would be concerned with the company’s Strategic Plan. But I won’t need the whole answer from them; I’d just like to hear from them the summary of what their plan is and what their strategy is when we are going to meet face-to-face for the meeting. After the meeting, that’s when I’m going to look more closely and deeply in their company’s strategic plan, and then formulate a plan according to the information that I have gathered from it.
Same goes for the core competencies. Core competencies as defined from Encarta are areas of expertise that are fundamental to a particular job or function. It’s the same with the CSF’s. If they could pinpoint the core competencies earlier for me, then that could help in my formulation of the SISP.

5.What do you expect from the Strategic Information Systems Plan that I’m going to formulate?

*I will ask this to them because I want to know even a little from them on what they think they want from the information systems / information technology side of their company. And also, if what they want is not achievable, then the earlier we know it, the earlier we can inform them about it so there won’t be any complications.

6.On what grounds have you chosen me as the one to formulate the strategic information systems plan for your company?

*This question would be kind of like an evaluation question for me. I don’t know if this is important or something, but I’d like to know their basis on hiring me so that I could meet their expectations when formulating the SISP for their company. I could also exceed on what they expect me to do so I gain more points from them.

Questions that i have search....

The 5 Questions Every Company Should Ask Themselves

1. What Is a Strategic Marketing Plan?

To be effective, a strategic marketing plan identifies options and opportunities. It must be relevant and actionable. It should gather and distill information about your organization into one document that charts your course of action. A strategic marketing plan is a living document anchored to your company goals and focused on your growth and profitability.

2. How Can a Strategic Marketing Plan Help You?

The plan should support your company goals and help you attain them. It should be a blueprint for communicating the value of your products and/or services to your customers. Its primary purpose is to acquire and retain new customers effectively and maximize your ability to keep them. It all starts with establishing your goals.

3. What Are Your Marketing Goals?

Developing a strategic marketing plan to grow your business and increase your company's value needs to be driven by goals. Your goals may include broadening your marketing channels, shortening your sales cycle, increasing market share, improving your sales or call center performance and strengthening customer experiences. Once you know your goals, you can utilize your strengths to achieve them.

4. What Are Your Company's Strengths?

Every organization has certain strengths, like dominant market share, unique technologies and a strong balance sheet. Not all strengths are quite as evident, such as a company that is small but its size allows for innovation at a much faster pace than larger organizations. Every company has strengths and once you know yours, you can communicate them to existing and future customers.

5. Can Strategic Marketing Help You Maximize Your ROI?

Today's changing customer demands and increasing competition are putting extreme pressure on getting a good return on your marketing investment. Addressing these challenges requires superior marketing strategy and execution.

At MPA Media, we will use our expertise in Reader Engagement, Market Research, Direct Marketing, Internet Marketing and Database Marketing to aid your company in creating a customized, fully integrated Strategic Marketing Plan. From strategic marketing solutions to execution, our customized programs assist our customers in maximizing their return on every marketing dollar spent.

source: http://www.mpamedia.com/mrc/5questions.php

Assignment 7 (MIS 2)

Google is a highly successful Internet business. Recently they have broadened their scope with a multitude of new tools. Research Google’s business model and answer the following questions below. You may add additional information not included in these questions.


Questions :
Explain Google’s business model.
1. Who are their competitors?
2. How have they used information technology to their advantage?
3. How competitive are they in the market?
4. What new services do they offer?
5. What makes them so unique?
6. How competitive are they in the international market?


Answers:

(image above is the google's business model)
source: http://www.davechaffey.com/E-commerce-Internet-marketing-case-studies/Google-case-study

1.Who are their competitors?

1. Apple
-Being from partners to rivals, Apple is one of the stringent opponents for Google in the year 2010. Today, Apple and Google have been locking their horns in the field of Smartphone, Mobile App Store, OS, Mobile Ad, and Online Music and so on. Likewise, Apple is more than up to the task of battling Google in these areas as well as browsers, where Google Chrome competes against Apple Safari. But battle between will intensify, as the market for the digital music and SmartPhones is all set for growth in 2010. Google’s music search along with its partner MySpace and Pandora are looking to compete with Apple’s iTunes, which was the No 1 music retailer in United States in 2009. Further, Google’s Android will have tough time as Apple’s iPhones continues to grab hold of the market all round the globe.

2. Microsoft
-Microsoft is a company that have had one of the most dominant impacts in the IT industry. So without a doubt it is Google’s biggest adversary in 2010 and these two giants will be locking their horns for market supremacy in areas such as search, collaboration tools and browsers. Talking of these two giants, Google has reigned as leaders in search, but with release of BING in May 2009, Microsoft has raised few questions amongst in Google’s management team. With features such as ranking search results based on relevancy to other users, Microsoft has inked Bing-related deals with Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo.

3. Amazon
-Amazon with its Kindle e-book reader is one of the leaders in e-book reader’s market. The other area where Google is taking on Amazon is in cloud computing. Google’s Apps Engine, a newbie cloud computing platform that allows developers to create their own Web applications and run them on Google’s infrastructure will be competing with Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) which has already grab hold of market with its several upgrade after its release in 2006. So it will be a great battle to watch when these two giants fight for market supremacy on Cloud computing and E-book readership.

4. Facebook

-Facebook, probably the most popular stuff in the internet right now, has attracted
350 million active users in just six years and is subject of interest for the guys at Google too. In 2010, Google and Facebook rivalry is likely to heat up based on question that where will people find there information in future in Search or Social Network? With ever increasing use of social networking and the rise of Facebook, Google’s worry seems to a viable one. So, in 2010 Google with its ORKUT will be in battle with Facebook.

5. Twitter
-No doubt if Facebook is in rise, than it’s no difference with Twitter. If social networking is the way to go, then Google will certainly find Twitter in its way. Twitter, a micro-blogging site, has in a way revolutionized the way we communicate these days.

So, Google’s Friend Connect will face tough competitions for Twitter’s Connect in 2010 as Twitter looks to move up the rank in the areas of Social Networking. Other areas where these two find themselves competing are Real time search. Google’s real time search and Twitter’s will be trying to outperform each other in 2010. So, this battle will be a good one to watch for in 2010.

source: http://technology.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/10-toughest-competitors-of-google-in-2010/

2&3. How have they used information technology to their advantage & How competitive are they in the market?

Previously I’ve written about the corporate culture at Google and how it isn’t likely to be an easy thing to emulate. Today at work, my coworker, Jackson, showed me this post that links to a slide show that delves into Google’s internal processes. Another post that I recently read was Steve Yegge’s post on Good Agile, Bad Agile, in which Steve explores Google’s version of agile.

Needless to say, it all adds up to a lot of Google on the brain. Google, at the moment, is held up as the gold standard of software companies. They have achieved massive success and are the company almost every developer wants to work for. Ask someone in the software industry which company they want to emulate and they will likely say Google.

Obviously, if it was easy to emulate Google, everyone would have done it or would be doing it by now. The more I think about Google, the more and more I think it is going to be impossible to emulate them. Certainly you can steal some of their ideas and what they’ve pioneered and put it to use in your company, but outright copying Google is going to be near impossible.

Having touched on Google’s corporate culture, let’s look at something else that makes Google even more unique: how it grows.

One thing that has become evident to me is that Google grows in an organic fashion, unlike any other company I know of. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense, as far as I can tell.

Let me elaborate on this. Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.

Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the agile process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads come in. It’s beautiful.

It’s also unlikely any other company is going to be able to pull this off. Google hit on the formula for ads before anyone else. They now have such a commanding lead in that arena that to compete with them you need deep pockets of money of your own. That makes it difficult to launch a company and follow Google’s lead of avoiding external dependencies and having the near perfect product development process.

At this point, you might be screaming at me that I’m wrong, because Google does have external contracts, especially for serving up ads on other sites. But notice that Google’s contracts are different from most companies’ contracts. Google isn’t developing a product for these companies. All they are doing is giving them an existing product that Google has already completed and released. Development on that product might still be happening, but it happens within Google, not within the realms of the contract. Google is still free to develop how ever they want.

For almost everyone else, you’re going to have to create a product and then drive sales of that product or else sign a contract and then deliver a custom product to the customer. You’ll have external dependencies that will force an outside reality upon you that Google simply doesn’t have. You can argue that Google is dependent upon ads, but at this point Google has captured such a large share of that market and is steadily capturing more of it, that it really isn’t a dependency for Google. Sure, Google should probably diversify, just in case the ad market tanks, but at this point Google has so much money they can afford to take their time.

So now you see. It’s unlikely you or anyone else is going to emulate Google. Kiss that dream goodbye.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from Google. Copy the good things that Google does and adapt them to your business. What you shouldn’t do is force the practices of Google on your business simple because they are what Google does. Google is a product of a very specific evolution and your business will be the product of a different evolution.

And when your developers come to you and say that they want to be exactly like Google, you now have an argument to explain why your business can’t be exactly like Google.

Still, there’s nothing preventing you from being the next great company after Google. That prize is still there for the taking.

source: http://www.programmersparadox.com/2008/03/17/googles-unique-advantage/

New Services...

Standalone applications

* AdWords Editor (Mac OS X, Windows 2000 SP3+/XP/Vista)

Desktop application to manage a Google AdWords account. The application allows users to make changes to their account and advertising campaigns before synchronising with the online service.

* Chrome (Windows XP/Vista/7, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X)

Web browser.

* Desktop (Mac OS X, Windows 2000 SP3+/XP/Vista,Linux )

Desktop search application, that indexes e-mails, documents, music, photos, chats, Web history and other files. It allows the installation of Google Gadgets.

* Earth (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows 2000/XP/Vista, iPhone)

Virtual globe that uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe.

* Gmail/Google Notifier (Mac OS X, Windows 2000/XP)

Alerts the user of new messages in their Gmail account.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

Makes Them Unique...

"Google isn't a technology company, it is a Platform, and they happen to be the only player in the market. While they have "competitors" in almost every line of business they run, they don't "compete" with anyone yet because no one else has a comparable Platform: not Microsoft, not "Big Media", not even the US government as demonstrated by the slide detailing traffic statistics for Whitehouse.gov's Google Moderator. Google's investments in technology are less about the technology itself and more about leverage gained by participating in the ecosystem that has developed around the Google Platform."

source: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/05/googles-unique-position-and-im.html

How competitive they are in the market?
- In my own opinion google now is one highest and toughest competitor in the market. Everything we want to know about our assignments, any transactions, etc . we just google it. So for me, the word google now became a verb or an action word because people always say if they dont know the answer in a particular question, they just say "GOOGLE IT!" then person make move typing in the keyboard searching the answer. It is hard to live without google.

Assignment 1

Think about yourself worthy to be called as IT professional, how do you see yourself 10 years from now, what are your strategies to get there?


So first of all let us take some research about how this some IT professionals make their strategies enable them to be success.

How to keep achieving your goals

By Earl Nightingale

I like to define success as the progressive realization of a worthy goal. The purpose of this message is to tell you of a wonderful way to keep realizing -- to keep achieving -- your goals, one after another, in the years ahead.

A goal sometimes seems so far off, and our progress often appears to be so painfully slow, that we have a tendency to lose heart. It sometimes seems we'll never make the grade. And we come close to falling back into old habits that, while they may be comfortable now, lead to nowhere.

Well, there's a way to beat this. It's been used successfully by many of the world's most successful people, and it's been advocated by many of the greatest thinkers. It's to live successfully one day at a time!

The building blocks of a successful life

A lifetime is comprised of days, strung together into weeks, months and years. Let's reduce it to a single day, and then, still furthermore, to each task of that day.

A successful life is nothing more than a lot of successful days put together. It's going to take so many days to reach your goal. If this goal is to be reached in a minimum amount of time, every day must count.

Think of a single day as a building block with which you're building the tower of your life. Just as a stonemason can put only one stone in place at a time, you can live only one day at a time. And it's the way in which these stones are place that will determine the beauty and the strength of your tower. If each stone is successfully placed, the tower will be a success. If, on the other hand, the stones are put down in a hit-or-miss fashion, the whole tower is in danger. Now this may seem to be a rather elementary way of looking at it, but I want to make my point clear -- and it's a good and logical way of looking at a human life.

Putting this idea into practice

All right, then, let's take it one day at a time, from the time we wake up in the morning until we drop-off to sleep at night, keeping our goal in mind as often as possible.

Now, each day consists of a series of tasks -- tasks of all kinds. And the success of a day depends upon the successful completion of most of these tasks. If everything we do during the day is a success -- that is, done in the best fashion of which we are capable -- we can fall asleep that night in the comfortable knowledge that we've done our very best, that our day has been a success, that one more stone has been successfully put into place.

Do each day all that can be done that day. You don't need to overwork -- or to rush blindly into your work, trying to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible amount of time. Don't try to do tomorrow's or next week's work today. It's not so much the number of things you do, but the quality, the efficiency of each separate action that counts. Gradually, you'll find yourself increasing the number of tasks and performing them all much more efficiently.

This is the way to really live!


resources:http://www.innovationtools.com/Articles/SuccessDetails.asp?a=132

Want to be more successful? Develop an attitude of service

By Chuck Frey

According to the late self-help expert Earl Nightingale, our success in life is directly proportional to the number of people we serve and the quality of that service. While this life principle may seem to be so simple as to be-self-evident, it's surprising the number of people who don't seem to be unaware that it applies to them. But, like any natural law, it does apply, to everyone.

Let's take a closer look at the relationship between your service and your compensation in life, and then explore some creative ways that you can enrich others -- and yourself -- by increasing your service to them.

Measuring your service

Earl Nightingale was a fan of visual metaphors as a tool for communicating important principles and concepts. To illustrate the relationship between service and compensation, he used the image of an apothecary scale -- the type of measuring device once used in pharmacies in the early part of the 20th century. It consisted of two bowls, hung from a horizontal arm. In one bowl, the pharmacist placed the medicine to be weighed. In the other bowl, he or she placed precisely calibrated metal weights, until the two sides of the scale were in balance -- in other words, until the arm was perfectly horizontal.

What does an old pharmacy scale have to do with our comparison of success and service? Imagine that one of the bowls is marked "compensation" and the other is marked "service." According to Nightingale, we only need to focus on the quality of the service we provide and the number of the people whom we serve -- the service side of the scale. The compensation will follow, in proportion to the service we offer to others. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Focus on service, not compensation

Many people, Nightingale complained, are too focused on increasing their compensation, without providing a commensurate increase in their service. Many people fall prey to an attitude of, "My employer isn't paying me enough, so I won't do any more for them." Others may feel stuck on the same job, year after year, but never make a personal commitment to learn more about their job or profession, and therefore increase their ability to serve their employer, and therefore their value.

Many organizations offer credit for continuing education as part of their compensation packages, yet these benefits are often chronically underutilized by workers. In short, the vast majority of people who complain about the lack of pay, fulfillment and opportunity in their careers are victims not of their jobs, but of the attitudes they hold about their jobs. In other words, these people are focusing their attention on the wrong side of the scale.

In order to increase our compensation, you must develop creative ways to increase your service -- and in so doing, set in motion a positive "boomerang effect" of increasing returns to yourself. For those who understand this principle, life is a grand adventure. These unique souls focus on the service side of the scale, and superior compensation follows in turn, in proportion to their service.

Strategies for improving your service

So how can you increase your service, and therefore your compensation? There are many creative ways to do this. One of the best strategies is to engage in continuous, ongoing learning in your field of study as well as other areas of interest to you. By developing a mindset of continuous learning, you are constantly feeding the raw material pile of your mind, which it can then draw upon when you're brainstorming.

For example, one of my "occupational hobbies" has been business creativity and innovation. I read every book and article I can get my hands on, I subscribe to creativity newsletters and I purchase and use tools designed to help me develop more and better innovative ideas. The results in my career have been outstanding, and my expanded ability to think creatively has had a very positive influence on all areas of my life. It is also resulted in a launch of the InnovationTools Web site you are visiting right now!

People who engage in continuous learning naturally tend to outgrow their jobs over a period of time, often resulting in promotions or better job offers. Most often, people are promoted because they have outgrown their current position, not because they have repeated the same level of experience year after year.

Another way to increase your service is to cultivate what's called an "insight outlook." In other words, learn from your experiences and your ongoing education, but always with an eye toward how you can apply it or adapt it to your current situation. Companies are always in need of fresh ideas, insights and outlooks, and they will pay the people who provide them and who can solve problems creatively.

Align yourself with opportunity

In addition, Earl Nightingale believed (and I agree) that people who concentrate on the service side of the scale find themselves profiting from all sorts of unique opportunities that others dismiss as "luck."

To use another metaphor, opportunities and ideas don't come into your life dressed as shiny gems or diamonds. Rather, they tend to appear like diamonds in the rough, or as opportunities dressed in work clothes. In other words, it's easy to look right at a situation that contains a potential opportunity, and overlook it. On the other hand, if you know what you're looking for, you can uncover these opportunities, often right under your own nose. You must then use your creative thinking and problem solving skills to hone them and shape them into the successes they will one day become.

resources: http://www.innovationtools.com/Articles/SuccessDetails.asp?a=115

River people vs. goal people

By Chuck Frey

The late self-help expert Earl Nightingale once explained that there are two types of people: river people and goal people. Both types of people can experience personal fulfillment and success in life, although in different ways.

Goal People

Most of us are undoubtedly familiar with goal people. They are the individuals who write down their objectives and timetables for reaching them, and then focus on attaining them, one by one.

By laying out a roadmap of future achievements in front of them, goal people give their creative minds a clear set of stimuli to work on. Their subconscious minds can then get to work incubating ideas and insights that will help them to reach their goals.

To use a football analogy, goal people need an end zone or a set of (what else?) goal posts, upon which they can focus their creative energies.

River People

River people, on the other hand, don't like to follow such a structured route to success. They are called river people because they are happiest and most fulfilled when they are wading in a rich "river" of interest -- a subject or profession about which they are very passionate. While they may not have a concrete plan with measurable goals, river people are often successful because they are so passionate about their area of interest. This, in turn, helps them to recognize breakthrough opportunities that may not even be visible on the mental radar screens of the more narrowly focused goal people.

River people are explorers, continually seeking out learning opportunities and new experiences. For river people, joy comes from the journey, not from reaching the destination -- exactly the opposite of goal people.

From the standpoint of creativity, river people are more likely to benefit from serendipity, because they tend to be more open to new ideas, points of view and insights than single-minded, focused goal people.
Recognizing both qualities in yourself.

Most people are a combination of these two personality types. I know I am. In my full-time job, I am expected to be goal oriented. I have specific personal and departmental objectives for which I'm responsible.

At the same time, however, I get the most "juice" out of being an explorer, learning new skills, collecting information and writing about innovation and technology -- and nurturing this growing Web site! So at different times, I embody characteristics of both a goal person and a river person. Likewise, most of you embody traits of both personality types at one time or another.

The important point is to recognize and nurture both aspects of your personality. Joyce Wycoff, in her new book, "A Year of Waking Up," tells a story that illustrates this in a memorable way. When she reached the age of 50, she felt curiously unfulfilled. At the same time, a little, persistent voice inside her was urging her on to explore new activities and experiences. She answered that call, taking art classes, keeping a personal journal, writing poetry and pursuing other artistic endeavors. It has been a marvelous, exciting, enlightening journey ever since.

"This journey has made me wonder anew how much there is to ourselves that remains undiscovered," she reflects. "Are we like a fractal (image) that, as we zoom in, reveals ever more patterns, each wonderful and beautiful?"

Indeed, there is so much to explore and so much to know that we ought to make time in our lives for both our goal and river personas. Both bring richness and fullness to our lives, like yin and yang sides of our personality.

If you're predominantly a goal person, why not slow down and smell the roses, as our friend Joyce Wycoff did? Take an art class, just for the fun of it. Try reading different magazines. Talk to different people, or go to different seminars or classes outside of your core competencies, with the goal of opening yourself up to new experiences. I think you'll be amazed at the richness these new inputs bring to your life.

If you're predominantly a river person, you may want to try brainstorming a handful of goals for yourself, to give yourself a bit more focus and direction. For example, you may want to jot down lists of books you'd like to read, knowledge or skills you'd like to acquire or places you'd like to visit.

Finally, be on the lookout for new experiences and learning opportunities on a daily basis. You never know when they're going to appear -- the key is to recognize them when they do!

resources: http://www.innovationtools.com/Articles/SuccessDetails.asp?a=97

As I can see 10 from now for me

As I can see 10 years from now, my target in that range of time is to become an it analyst/database administrator/network administrator/a manager in a company.

As I read those strategies that we research there are lots of points of views that are really true enabled to be success. First of that enable you to be success it says that you should know your strength and weaknesses or measuring your service. In measuring yourself the strength and your weakness you will know how to take risk to avoid risk and the resistance to challenge those risks. Another strategy is improving yourself, it means that if we know our strength and weakness of course we know our limitations, so, from that we can also give some thoughts on how to develop ourselves enable to grow our self capability then from that we will be more competitive person. The third is determining your goal and focus on it and also make a strategic plan for your goal or ambition in life. Another is aligning yourself from opportunity, as what i said above knowing on how to take a risk to avoid risk and to challenge those risk, so from that seeking from opportunity is very important tool also to develop the right job for us, if you see you have a lots of opportunity to choose, make sure that you will choose the right job or opportunity for you enable you to be more competitive in that field you choose and also you can handle it well. If you think you have less opportunity make a way or some technique to find it, don't always wait for a chance but seeking the chance. Another is that where you belong like the term the river people and the goal people, where you want to be. The river people are those people i think that are don’t have a straight goal to have, if there where another opportunity that they will see in their way they will attempt to change their plan. Another I think those people are just relying where many people want to go , if the majority of their decision of the people they just follow it like a river flowing where as the goal people are those
people that don’t stop reaching their goal if they do not reach it. They are people who want to reach their goal one by one. And I think with the 2 kinds of people I want to be enable for me to achieve my goal I would prefer to be at the goal people because for me reaching your goal is truly a difficult task to do so you should be focus on it no other things
to mind but only how to reach that goal and after you achieve your goal that's the time that you think another goal you plan to achieve.

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?

Let us just first define the business plan and the Information System plan enable for us to understand it clearly.

Business Plan

A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.

The business goals may be defined for for-profit or for non-profit organizations. For-profit business plans typically focus on financial goals, such as profit or creation of wealth. Non-profit and government agency business plans tend to focus on organizational mission which is the basis for their governmental status or their non-profit, tax-exempt status, respectively—although non-profits may also focus on optimizing revenue. In non-profit organizations, creative tensions may develop in the effort to balance mission with "margin" (or revenue). Business plans may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal.

For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organization’s mission. Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organization’s ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.

Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.

"... a good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure."

resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan

Information System Plan

In a very broad sense, the term information system is frequently used to refer to the interaction between people, processes, data and technology. In this sense, the term is used to refer not only to the information and communication technology (ICT) an organization uses, but also to the way in which people interact with this technology in support of business processes.

Some make a clear distinction between information systems, ICT and business processes. Information systems are distinct from information technology in that an information system is typically seen as having an ICT component. Information systems are also different from business processes. Information systems help to control the performance of business processes.

Alter argues for an information system as a special type of work system. A work system is a system in which humans and/or machines perform work using resources (including ICT) to produce specific products and/or services for customers. An information system is a work system whose activities are devoted to processing (capturing, transmitting, storing, retrieving, manipulating and displaying)information.

Part of the difficulty in defining the term information system is due to vagueness in the definition of related terms such as system and information. Beynon-Davies argues for a clearer terminology based in systemics and semiotics. He defines an information system as an example of a system concerned with the manipulation of signs. An information system is a type of socio-technical system. An information system is a mediating construct between actions and technology.

As such, information systems inter-relate with data systems on the one hand and activity systems on the other. An information system is a form of communication system in which data represent and are processed as a form of social memory. An information system can also be considered a semi-formal language which supports human decision making and action.

Information systems are the primary focus of study for the information systems discipline and for organizational informatics.

resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_system

Conclusion:

My conclusion about the relationship of business plan to information system plan, as what stated above the business plan is a set of goals on how they will achieve those goals while the information system plan is developing strategy and plans for aligning information system with the business strategy of an organization. The business plan is a whole plan why that company was found what was the purpose the goal of the company, another is the plan or the strategic plan of the company on how to achieve their goal while the information system plan is a tool on which it can help to achieve the goal of the company in an effective way that the company can easily identify what to do or how they will make a move to reach their goals.

ASSIGNMENT 8 (HRM)

On the assumption that you heard/read the SONA of the President last month (July 2009), identify at least 3 areas related to Human Resource Mangement and explain how these areas can improve our quality of life. (2000words)


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Sona of the president - talking about Human Resource Related

1.)Microfinance

“Nakinabang ang pitong milyong entrepreneurs sa P165 billion na microfinance. Nakinabang ang 1,000 sa economic resiliency plan. Kasama natin ngayon ang isa sa kanila, si Gigi Gabiola. Dating household service worker sa Dubai, ngayon siya ay nagtatrabaho sa DOLE.”

Wow..entrepreneurs contribute a lot in our economy. The lesson that we can learn from this person Gigi Gabiola was the perseverance to achieve our goal in life, the challenge to be success in life or improve the quality of live. It is just that we should not depend on the president or in the government officials that we vote because it is our responsibility to make our goals come true. And I think the role of those who are in the positions are just to guide us on how we able to be success.

2.)Health

“Mula noong 2001, Nanawagan tayo ng mas murang gamot. Nagbebenta na tayo ng mga gamot na kalahating presyo sa libu-libong Botika ng Bayan at Botika ng Barangay sa maraming dako ng bansa. Our efforts prodded the pharmaceutical companies to come up with low-cost generics and brands like RiteMed. I supported the tough version of the House of the Cheaper Medicine Law. I supported it over the weak version of my critics. The result: the drug companies volunteered to bring down drug prices, slashing by half the prices of 16 drugs.”

A good benefit to us. Medicine are such expensive like the daily vitamins that you take. And also for the person that are sick or in ill it is such a headache in their minds. So, i say thank you for making this medicine for affordable. It just a great contribution to us people leaving in the Philippines to have a low price of medicine. Good job|!


3.)EDUCATION

“Our educational system should make the Filipino fit not just for whatever jobs happen to be on offer today, but also for whatever economic challenge life will throw in their way….”

In my opinion it is just like we are studying, getting the course that we want and it is just a useless that our course is not fit for our job. WHAT THE EIW!!....(hmnpf) but in spite of that i understand that this country the Philippines is just a low of job importunity not in the sense a very little but the government cannot support the yearly graduates of our schools. So let's just help find a way we can get jobs after we graduate so that to help our selves and also to contribute to our economy.

4.) OFW Benefits

“Meanwhile, we should make their sacrifices worthwhile. Dapat gumawa tayo ng mga mas malakas na paraan upang proteksyonan at palawak ang halaga ng kanilang pinagsikapang sweldo. That means stronger consumer protection for OFWs investing in property and products back home. Para sa kanila, pinapakilos natin ang Investors Protection Task Force….”

For this issue yeah!!I really agree for that even if my parents are not OFWs but still i really understand the sickness when far from your family the sacrifices they have made day by day, the challenges so let just respect it.
In support for this I heard in the program in the ABS-CBN in WOWOWEE.. when the players where OFWs and then when one of the players there has a great disappointment of his wife because he said in five years he worked in abroad even a single cent she did not save. Wow!!what a crap!..what a terrible wife but to criticize his wife i dont really know the reason why she did not save but the husband said that it just about the "BISYO"! toinks.. crap!!

So here are some of areas of Human Resource :

Areas in Human resource management include:

Change Management-

organizational and personal change management, process, plans, change management and business development tips

Here are some rules for effective management of change. Managing organizational change will be more successful if you apply these simple principles. Achieving personal change will be more successful too if you use the same approach where relevant. Change management entails thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, and above all, consultation with, and involvement of, the people affected by the changes. If you force change on people normally problems arise. Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. These aspects are especially relevant to managing personal change. Before starting organizational change, ask yourself: What do we want to achieve with this change, why, and how will we know that the change has been achieved? Who is affected by this change, and how will they react to it? How much of this change can we achieve ourselves, and what parts of the change do we need help with? These aspects also relate strongly to the management of personal as well as organizational change.

See also the modern principles which underpin successful change.

For a wonderful example of managing successful ethical change in modern times, see 'Three Wins'.

Do not sell change to people as a way of accelerating 'agreement' and implementation. 'Selling' change to people is not a sustainable strategy for success, unless your aim is to be bitten on the bum at some time in the future when you least expect it. When people listen to a management high-up 'selling' them a change, decent diligent folk will generally smile and appear to accede, but quietly to themselves, they're thinking, "No bloody chance mate, if you think I'm standing for that load of old bollocks you've another think coming…" (And that's just the amenable types - the other more recalcitrant types will be well on the way to making their own particular transition from gamekeepers to poachers.)

Instead, change needs to be understood and managed in a way that people can cope effectively with it. Change can be unsettling, so the manager logically needs to be a settling influence.

Check that people affected by the change agree with, or at least understand, the need for change, and have a chance to decide how the change will be managed, and to be involved in the planning and implementation of the change. Use face-to-face communications to handle sensitive aspects of organisational change management (see Mehrabian's research on conveying meaning and understanding). Encourage your managers to communicate face-to-face with their people too if they are helping you manage an organizational change. Email and written notices are extremely weak at conveying and developing understanding.

If you think that you need to make a change quickly, probe the reasons - is the urgency real? Will the effects of agreeing a more sensible time-frame really be more disastrous than presiding over a disastrous change? Quick change prevents proper consultation and involvement, which leads to difficulties that take time to resolve.

For complex changes, refer to the process of project management, and ensure that you augment this with consultative communications to agree and gain support for the reasons for the change. Involving and informing people also creates opportunities for others to participate in planning and implementing the changes, which lightens your burden, spreads the organizational load, and creates a sense of ownership and familiarity among the people affected.

See also the excellent free decision-making template, designed by Sharon Drew Morgen, with facilitative questions for personal and organizational innovation and change.

To understand more about people's personalities, and how different people react differently to change, see the personality styles section.

For organizational change that entails new actions, objectives and processes for a group or team of people, use workshops to achieve understanding, involvement, plans, measurable aims, actions and commitment. Encourage your management team to use workshops with their people too if they are helping you to manage the change.

You should even apply these principles to very tough change like making people redundant, closures and integrating merged or acquired organizations. Bad news needs even more careful management than routine change. Hiding behind memos and middle managers will make matters worse. Consulting with people, and helping them to understand does not weaken your position - it strengthens it. Leaders who fail to consult and involve their people in managing bad news are perceived as weak and lacking in integrity. Treat people with humanity and respect and they will reciprocate.

Be mindful that the chief insecurity of most staff is change itself. See the process of personal change theory to see how people react to change. Senior managers and directors responsible for managing organizational change do not, as a rule, fear change - they generally thrive on it. So remember that your people do not relish change, they find it deeply disturbing and threatening. Your people's fear of change is as great as your own fear of failure.

responsibility for managing change

The employee does not have a responsibility to manage change - the employee's responsibility is no other than to do their best, which is different for every person and depends on a wide variety of factors (health, maturity, stability, experience, personality, motivation, etc). Responsibility for managing change is with management and executives of the organisation - they must manage the change in a way that employees can cope with it. The manager has a responsibility to facilitate and enable change, and all that is implied within that statement, especially to understand the situation from an objective standpoint (to 'step back', and be non-judgemental), and then to help people understand reasons, aims, and ways of responding positively according to employees' own situations and capabilities. Increasingly the manager's role is to interpret, communicate and enable - not to instruct and impose, which nobody really responds to well.
change must involve the people - change must not be imposed upon the people

Be wary of expressions like 'mindset change', and 'changing people's mindsets' or 'changing attitudes', because this language often indicates a tendency towards imposed or enforced change (theory x), and it implies strongly that the organization believes that its people currently have the 'wrong' mindset, which is never, ever, the case. If people are not approaching their tasks or the organization effectively, then the organization has the wrong mindset, not the people. Change such as new structures, policies, targets, acquisitions, disposals, re-locations, etc., all create new systems and environments, which need to be explained to people as early as possible, so that people's involvement in validating and refining the changes themselves can be obtained.

Whenever an organization imposes new things on people there will be difficulties. Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are the important factors.

Workshops are very useful processes to develop collective understanding, approaches, policies, methods, systems, ideas, etc. See the section on workshops on the website.

Staff surveys are a helpful way to repair damage and mistrust among staff - provided you allow allow people to complete them anonymously, and provided you publish and act on the findings.

Management training, empathy and facilitative capability are priority areas - managers are crucial to the change process - they must enable and facilitate, not merely convey and implement policy from above, which does not work.

You cannot impose change - people and teams need to be empowered to find their own solutions and responses, with facilitation and support from managers, and tolerance and compassion from the leaders and executives. Management and leadership style and behaviour are more important than clever process and policy. Employees need to be able to trust the organization.

The leader must agree and work with these ideas, or change is likely to be very painful, and the best people will be lost in the process.

change management principles

1. At all times involve and agree support from people within system (system = environment, processes, culture, relationships, behaviours, etc., whether personal or organisational).
2. Understand where you/the organisation is at the moment.
3. Understand where you want to be, when, why, and what the measures will be for having got there.
4. Plan development towards above No.3 in appropriate achievable measurable stages.
5. Communicate, involve, enable and facilitate involvement from people, as early and openly and as fully as is possible.


Executive recruiters -

Management Recruiting Today

Historically, management recruiting was a very personal professional. The management headhunters and recruiters cultivated direct, personal relationships with Business owners, managers of recruiting firms, and the like. At the same time, executive recruiters maintained a list of clients who were interested in finding gainful and satisfying employment in one professional field of another. With the advent of high-tech advances in communications, management headhunters have had to adapt and change in order to provide optimum Service to their clientele. In no small way, gone are the days where the fostering of personal relationships was of primary concern. And, presently, enter the day of high-tech communication and the Internet.
How an Executive Recruiter Stays in the Game

As mentioned at the start of this article, executive recruiters must be well versed in the latest technology if they want to continue to play a significant part in the field of employment placement and related endeavors. In the 21st century marketplace, with the use of high-tech Communication via the World Wide Web and similar venues, it is very easy for employers to make direct contact with potential employees thereby effectively freezing out the recruiters who are looking for management positions all together. Therefore, the most successful executive recruiters, search firms and Recruiting services are taking consistent and determined steps to maintain access to the most current forms of technology. By doing so, a search firm, recruiting firm or management executive recruiter will be able to continue to serve as a vital link between an employer and a prospective employee.
Internet Resources: The Online Directory of Executive Recruiters

Fortunately, there are an abundant number of Internet resources available to today's executive recruiter. Chief amongst these are online directories of various sorts and varieties. These online directories can assist management headhunters, recruiting firms, executive search firms and the like in obtaining information and services relevant to their particular pursuits. For example, pharmaceutical executive recruiters and management executive recruiter specializing in placing health care related professionals can draw upon a whole host of online directories and directory services that provide information on employment and hiring resources in the mammoth pharmaceutical industry. There are a significant number of specialty online directories that can readily serve and service the needs of head hunters and others in the employment and job placement industry. Examples of these types of information resources include different versions of the directory of executive recruiters and the more general recruiter directory.

sources: http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm
http://www.onlinerecruitersdirectory.com/executive-recruiters.html

ASSIGNMENT 7 (HRM)

"Human beings are the most important, potent and critical, resource of any organization, and yet the least understood and the worst managed of its resources" (1500words)

Wow..I think this is a great reflection to make and a very critical to think with this topic.

So to begin with,First I'll discuss it one by one to make it clear and at the bottom is my outline on how i discuss the subtopics.

*Why Humans are the most important in an organization?
*Why Humans are the most critical in an organization?
*why Humans are the most resource in an organization?
*Why Humans are least understood in an organization?
*Why Humans are the worst to manage of its resources in an organization?

Why Humans are the most important in an organization?

As a Human Resources professional, I like to explain this importance in car terms so that it's simple for anyone to understand.

The board of directors or senior managers make descisions about where they want the car (or organisation) to head, and how they would like this to happen (timeframes, route etc.).

The staff are the tyres and pistons - the working parts, and just like a car, the organisation goes nowhere if these parts are not oiled correctly.

In any organisation HRM works between staff and management to reach common goals and achieve a good workplace environment and an instant increase in producativity.

Of course this will only occur in organisations who's HR branch are given powers beyond payroll, like planning and consultitive arrangements.

Why Humans are the most critical in an organization?

Employee engagement is a critical issue for organizations today. It was identified as the number one strategy that organizations are pursuing in 2009, according to Aberdeen’s report The 2009 HR Executive’s Agenda. In addition, Aberdeen’s January 2009 study, Fully On-Board, found that Best-in-Class organizations are overwhelmingly focusing onboarding processes on engaging new employees and assimilating them into the organization's cultural and social fabric.

Aberdeen’s latest research, Beyond Satisfaction: Engaging Employees to Retain Customers, looks at how organizations are addressing engagement issues, and describes how Best-in-Class companies are achieving impressive results.

* 82% of Best-in-Class organizations attribute changes in profitability and/or revenue DIRECTLY to employee engagement initiatives and more than twice as likely as all others to validate that impact through data
* Best-in-Class organizations are 33% more likely to provide engagement training and tools to their managers than all other organizations
* Best-in-Class companies are also seeing a 22% year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction / loyalty and a 21% year-over-year improvement in turnover / retention

To create an engaging environment, organizations must understand how to engage individuals with the overarching goals of the organization - not just create an environment where employees feel satisfied that their personal needs are being met. In fact, this linkage to activities that delver business results is what differentiates employee engagement from employee satisfaction. Satisfaction could indicate that an individual is happy their paycheck comes on time, or that their schedule doesn't interfere with their weekend plans. It doesn't necessarily reflect any connection with the priorities of the organization. To achieve this alignment, employee engagement efforts must be managed and measured in terms of business impact, and organizations must create an engagement mindset among all leaders and managers.

http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/analyst-insight/86-human-capital-management-insights/754-employee-engagement-is-critical-for-organizations-today-

why Humans are the most resource in an organization?

How Human Resources can Resource Humans.

Despite our best intentions so much of what we practice in Human Resources, including training and development, does little more than reinforce that the organisation views its people as resources first and humans a distant second. Humans are analyzed, measured and evaluated as a resource, rather than as human beings with lives personalities, wants, desires and feelings.

We regularly talk of our people as categories ' the sales people' or 'Our middle managers' or we talk of them in terms of numbers and statistics, ' 45% of our people are engaged with their work.' "We now have a staff moral average of 83%'. We measure and review our people as averages, on everything from the levels of engagement and moral, through analysis of learning needs, to tracking our staff turnover figures, as percentages of the whole.

These numbers and averages are, of course, useful in terms of identifying trends that are emerging or transpiring within our business. However, the danger is that by placing too much emphasis (and faith) in the averages and percentages we inadvertently begin to think of and treat our people as EVERBODY rather than SOMEBODY! The down side of focusing too extensively on averages is that we can easily misinterpret the reality of the situation. People do not experience averages, they experience specifics and extremes and variances!
People experience specifics rather than averages because of course, we are all unique with unique perspectives and experiences, even in a common environment. However even though we all know and readily accept that we are all different it seems repeatedly in HR and training we do not necessarily act accordingly. We seem to regularly forget ( or are forced by circumstances and time restrictions) that what we are really talking about are individuals with specific needs desires and wants.
Even such current and popular frames of references as the emphasis on understanding the Generation Y phenomenon, tends to ensure companies begin to fall into the trap of generalizing the individuality and uniqueness out of the way they view and relate to people.

When Human Resources get too caught up with the numbers and averages we live up to our name as viewing people as resources by balancing our approach we can invert this phenomenon and begin to dedicate ourselves to Resourcing Humans. After fifteen years of working with people and organisations as corporate anthropologists we have found that organisations that engage and retain their people with the least amount of cost are more focused on resourcing their humans than treating them as human resources. So what's an alternative?
Well one approach that definitely works and has numerous merits is working with values. Using a comprehensive values approach organisations can support themselves and their people to identify and work with the specific values of individuals in an effort to align them with peoples work roles the company values and even the company strategy and culture.
Research of over ten thousand personal values inventories (drawing from the globally validated pool of 128 human values) for people in organisations, in Australia and New Zealand demonstrates that no two people have ever had an identical set of values. We define person's values as their preferences multiplied by the priority they place on each preference. When a person has clarified their preferences and the priority associated with each preference they create for themselves a personal values hierarchy.
When companies understand that each and every one of us are driven by and motivated from own unique personal values hierarchy then they are able to immediately create a language and process for supporting humans to become acknowledged as a SOMEBODY distinct and separate from others.
Organisations that support their people to clarify their own personal values and then work to align those values with their work role benefit enormously. The people feel that the organisation is acknowledging and celebrating their individuality and uniqueness.

Values alignment to a work role is also the key to supporting your people to establish in very specific and personal terms what is making work meaningful for them. It identifies what specifically is driving their motivation to work, perform and even excel, all of which is unlikely to emerge from averages…It will also make sure that learning and development can be focused on skills rather than trying to cover up issues of personal alignment and mismatched priorities.

Insights and understanding of people personal values in alignment to their chosen work results in increased engagement and the unleashing of discretionary effort. Discretionary effort, in turn has a direct impact on people work performance and their decision to stay in a role (retention).

For a simple quick and effective way of enhancing your HR approach to resource humans then supporting your people to clarify their personal values and align them to their role will take you and them a long way down this path.

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Human-Resources/818/How-Human-Resources-can-Resource-Humans.html

Why Humans are least understood in an organization?
because of:
Competence is shown in action in a situation in a context that might be different the next time you have to act. In emergency contexts, competent people will react to the situation following behaviors they have previously found to succeed, hopefully to good effect. To be competent you need to be able to interpret the situation in the context and to have a repertoire of possible actions to take and have trained in the possible actions in the repertoire, if this is relevant. Regardless of training, competence grows through experience and the extent of an individual to learn and adapt. However, there has been much discussion among academics about the issue of definitions. The concept of competence has different meanings, and continues to remain one of the most diffuse terms in the management development sector, and the organizational and occupational literature (Collin, 1989).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competence_(human_resources)

Why Humans are the worst to manage of its resources in an organization?

EMPLOYEE TRUST – WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU FEAR THE WORST

Have you ever asked yourself; “Is this employee being upfront and honest with me?” We may have a gut feeling or something maybe does not size up, yet we have no concrete evidence of deceit. This is a difficult situation as the repercussions of falsely accusing an employee may hinder a future of trust.

It seems sometimes as managers of employees that we have to cultivate a sixth sense in order to know what is happening behind the scenes with certain individuals or groups of individuals within our organizations. And for those of us who have that sixth sense….it can be a benefit and a curse. The benefit being that we can sense an issue and hopefully prevent it from growing into a problem. The curse is that we can sense a problem and then we have to deal with it. And if we don’t act on that sense and deal with it, we kick ourselves later!

Experience typically shows that it is not advisable to ignore our sixth sense. When we ignore our senses or question our feelings, the doubt sets in and then we question our own abilities to know when something is not correct. This almost always backfires.

So what to do. First I will share what not to do. And that, my friend, is to not ignore the problem. Begin documentation. Not later, NOW. A sense of something not being quite right can come and go and be easily forgotten. Example: You discover an employee has not been completing assignments as expected. You think about this discovery and you recall a sense of this a while back ….and maybe more than one time. Darn it, why didn’t you act on it at that moment? Perhaps you could have resolved this situation before it became a problem.

More of what to do. Step back. What if you would have documented this situation the moment you felt that gut reaction. A suggestion would be to have a private file on our PC or better yet a handy notebook (yes people still use these). Keep a notebook that is easy to get to. Jot down occurrences on scrap paper and move that information to the PC file or notebook. We must bring ourselves to be in the habit of noting things as they happen.

Now you can take action. When confronting an employee, one of the most important rules to follow is to focus on facts. A good measure to determine between what is truly factual and what is not is to ask yourself if the “fact” can be argued. If it can be argued, it is not a fact. Facts make for easier and honest communications. Facts will support you well in court. Example of a non-factual confrontation: “Joe, you are constantly coming into work late and signing in that you are arriving on time.” Example of a factual approach: “Joe, over the last 4 weeks I personally witnessed you arriving 15-20 minutes late on 4 occasions. These occurrences were on each of the last 4 Mondays. When I reviewed your timecard it shows that you are arriving on time.”

There are some efforts that we can take to decrease these types of occurrences. This includes taking some time to observe our employees’ behaviors more often. Spend time around them and listen; listen well. Sometimes by just taking the time to truly hear our employees we will prevent the bitterness that is often the result of dishonest behavior or even retaliation. As a next step we may choose to learn more about our employees’ needs. This can come in the form of simply asking, performing an employee survey or forming task groups to identify issues within our organization. Perhaps we will discover that training is needed. In some cases when employees are more confident in their work performance they will be less likely to act out or be dishonest. Assure that there is a real sense of the ability to openly communicate within our organizations. These are ideas that can work well in any size organization and across all industries.

It comes more naturally to some, but learn to listen to that sixth sense. Our senses grow as a result of years of various types of life and work experiences. Our instincts are a highly valuable resource right up there with our degree, diploma, and work experience and work history. Arguably they may be worth much more. By learning to trust our senses and value what we have learned, we will support ourselves and our organizations by utilizing all of the skills we have to offer.

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Human-Resources/3504/EMPLOYEE-TRUST--WHAT-TO-DO-WHEN-YOU-FEAR-THE-WORST.html