Final Examination

This is a take home examination that is due no later than Tuesday, December 12.. This is to be a capstone paper in which you put together all you have learned in this class. It will be built around the Critical Success Factor framework for success in IT projects. Your goal is, based on everything you have dealt with in this class, to identify and support what you think are the five most critical factors related to IT success/failure.

I would like you to begin with a Background section in which you very briefly review your thinking early in the class (as in Paper #1). This is your starting point.

Next, I want you to draw on the cases, the readings, the class sessions--in short all the resources made available to you as you proceed to move from where you started to where you are now regarding what is critical to IT success. I suggest that you start a new section and begin with a table such as is shown below which draws on the cases.

You should identify five specific CSFs that you think are the most important and critical to an IT project’s success. In other words, replace my CSF1 - -CSF5 with specific factors. Next, put a check in the table where the factor was critically related to a case.

Next, go through each CSF in a text section and support the effect of this CSF (case by case where checks appear in your table). In addition, for each CSF use support from readings and class as appropriate. Be at least a little specific as to the details of how the CSF applies. In other words, don't just simply say that leadership happened in the Singapore case, say a bit about who and how. Similarly with readings and class contributions.

Conclude this analysis by relating it to your initial thoughts in Paper #1. How have your ideas stayed the same or changed based on the cases we’ve worked with in this course? In other words, how has your understanding matured?

The maximum length for this paper is, single spaced, to be 5 pages.

There are two ways of submitting the final. First is to send it as an attachement in MS Word-97 in an email message. Second, you can drop off a hard copy to the secretary at the front of the 2nd floor office suite, David Strickland. He will have an envelope for them. If I do not receive a copy of the final, I will assume that you will stand on the grade that was made available for you upon completion of all the course work except the final.