23-Ind-B4 Design of Information Systems · December 2013
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — December 2013 — 98-Ind-B4, Design of Information Systems. 3 hours; closed book, no calculator permitted. The exam comprises four parts: Part A (select 20 of 40 terms and explain each in a sentence or two, 2 marks each = 40 marks), Parts B and C (select 2 of 5 questions in each part, 11 marks each = 22 marks per part), and Part D (select 1 of 2 questions, 16 marks). Complete answers to every term and every question in all four parts follow below, not only the minimum selection a candidate would submit on exam day.
Reference texts: Laudon & Laudon, Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 15th ed.; Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management, 9th ed.
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
These are the costs a capital-budgeting analysis (Question 1, term 10) most readily captures: the purchase price or licensing cost of hardware and software, and the initial installation, configuration, and integration labour needed to get the system running.
Hardware needs a physical or cloud environment to run in — data-centre space, power, cooling (HVAC), physical security, and network connectivity — costs that scale with the system's footprint and are easy to under-budget when only the equipment price is considered.
Ongoing help-desk staffing, system-administration labour (patching, backups, capacity monitoring, security management), and vendor maintenance/support contracts continue for the entire operational life of the system, not just at rollout, and typically exceed the original purchase price over a multi-year lifespan.
Both initial training when the system is deployed and ongoing training as staff turn over or the system is updated — a cost that is frequently underestimated because it does not appear on a vendor's invoice, even though inadequately trained users generate a large share of both support-desk load and user error.
Every hour a system is unavailable, being upgraded, or performing poorly costs the organization in lost output, missed transactions, or idle staff — a real economic cost that a narrow hardware/software price comparison entirely omits, and one of the largest hidden components in most published TCO studies.
Comparing two systems on purchase price alone routinely selects the wrong option, because the direct hardware/software cost is typically a minority of the true multi-year cost once infrastructure, support, training, and downtime are included; a rigorous capital-budgeting decision (term 10) for a major IT investment must therefore be built on a full TCO estimate, not the vendor's quoted price, to accurately compare competing proposals over the asset's whole life.
