Page 78 -

ChaPter 2 • underStanding and modeling organizational SyStemS 45

6. Many of the people who work at Pepe’s (Problem 5) are extremely dedicated to Pepe’s and have
devoted their lives to the company. Others feel that the company is behind the times and should
use more sophisticated production systems, information systems, and supply chain management to
make the company more competitive. Members of a third group feel that what they do is unappre-
ciated. Describe the various subcultures in words. Assign them a name, based on their emotions.
7. Alice in the human resources department at the Cho Manufacturing Company plant is constantly
being asked by employees how much is taken out of their paychecks for insurance, taxes, medical,
mandatory retirement, and voluntary retirement. “It takes up to a few hours every day,” says Alice.
She would like the company to have a Web system that would allow employees to use a secure
logon to view the information. Alice wants the system to interface with health and dental insurance
companies to obtain the amount remaining in the employee’s account for the year. She would also
like to obtain retirement amounts saved, along with investment results. Alice has a high regard for
privacy and wants the system to have employees register and give permission to obtain financial
amounts from the dental insurance and retirement companies. Draw a use case diagram representing
the activities of this employee benefits system.
8. Write up a use case scenario for the use case diagram you constructed for Cho Manufacturing.
9. At what level are you creating your use case for Cho Manufacturing? Choose one of the five altitude
metaphors and explain why you chose it.
10. Create a context-level data flow diagram for the employee benefits system in Problem 7. Make any
assumptions you need about the data to and from the central process. Do you find this to be better
than or not as good at explaining the system to Alice compared to the use case and use case scenarios?
11. Draw a use case and write up a use case scenario for getting two or three email accounts. Think about
the steps that are needed to ensure security.

Group Projects

1. Break up into groups of five. Assign one person to act as the website designer, one to write copy for a
company’s product, one to keep track of customer payments, one to monitor distribution, and one to sat-
isfy customers who have questions about using the product. Then select a simple product (one that does
not have too many versions). Good examples are a digital camera, a GPS, a box of candy, or a specialty
travel hat (rainproof or sunblocker). Now spend 20 minutes trying to explain to the website designer
what to include on the website. Describe in about three paragraphs what experience your group had in
coordination. Elaborate on the interrelatedness of subsystems in the organization (your group).
2. In a small group, develop a use case and a use case scenario for making air, hotel, and car reserva-
tions for domestic travel.
3. Change your answer in Group Project 2 to include foreign travel. How do the use case and use case
scenario change?
4. With your group, draw a context-level data flow diagram of your school’s or university’s registration
system. Label each entity and process. Discuss why there appear to be different ways to draw the
diagram. Reach consensus as a group about the best way to draw the diagram and defend your choice
in a paragraph. Now, working with the other members of your group, follow the appropriate steps for
developing an E-R diagram and create one for your school or university registration system. Make
sure your group indicates whether the relationship you depict is one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-
one, or many-to-many.

Selected Bibliography

Bleeker, S. E. “The Virtual Organization.” Futurist, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1994, pp. 9–14.
Chen, P. “The Entity-Relationship Model—Towards a Unified View of Data.” ACM Transactions on
Database Systems, Vol. 1, March 1976, pp. 9–36.
Ching, C., C. W. Holsapple, and A. B. Whinston. “Toward IT Support for Coordination in Network
Organizations.” Information Management, Vol. 30, No. 4, 1996, pp. 179–199.
Cockburn, A. “Use Case Icons,” http://alistair.cockburn.us/Use+case+icons?version=8339&diff=
8339&with=6296. Last accessed March 18, 2009.
Davis, G. B., and M. H. Olson. Management Information Systems, Conceptual Foundations, Structure,
and Development, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.
Galbraith, J. R. Organizational Design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977.