COMM 226 BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY
MANAGEMENT CHAPTER 1-12 FINAL
REVIEW QUESTIONS CORRECTLY
ANSWERED CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
,Chapter 1: Business Processes, Information, and Information Systems
Notes from Multiple Choice Questions
A business process is a network of activities, roles, resources, repositories, and data flows that
interact to accomplish a business function.
Activities are collections of related tasks that receive inputs and process those inputs to produce
outputs.
In a business process flowchart, activities are shown in rectangles.
Roles are sets of procedures.
Decisions are shown in diamonds in a business process flowchart.
A decision is a question that can be answered yes or no
Decisions provide branching points within the flow of a business process.
Roles are shown in ovals in a business process flowchart.
Resources are people, facilities, or computer programs that are assigned to roles.
Roles are shown above or below activities in a business process flowchart?
A repository is a collection of business records.
Repositories hold the collective memory of an organization?
Repositories are shown as scrolls in a business process flowchart.
What is the defining characteristic of the outermost components (hardware and people) of the IS
framework?
They take actions
The software and procedure components of the IS framework are both sets of instructions.
The software component of the IS framework provides instructions for hardware.
The procedure component of the IS framework provides instructions for people.
In the IS framework, data is the bridge between the computer side on the left and the human side
on the right.
Which of the following are actors in an information system?
Hardware and people
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,When work that was formerly done by people has been moved to computers, it is said to be
automated.
Automation of a process activity consists of moving work from the human side to the computer
side of the symmetrical five-component framework.
Information is defined as knowledge derived from data.
John Reed examines the stature of each of his team members on the school basketball team. He
finds that the average height of the players is 6 feet 3 inches. John's finding is an example of
information.
Data is defined as recorded facts or figures.
The fact that Jeff Parks works 9 hours per day is an example of data.
Which of the following is a characteristic of good information?
It must be contextually relevant
As the CEO of a call center, which of the following information is good information for you?
Department-level averages of revenue generation figures
Relevant information is information that directly pertains to both the context and to the subject it
references.
Which of the following refers to information that is based on correct and complete data, and has
been processed correctly as expected?
Accurate information
A monthly report that arrives 6 weeks late is an example of information that is not timely.
Which of the following is true regarding characteristics of good information?
Information must hold an appropriate relationship between its cost and its value.
A problem is the perceived difference between what is and what ought to be.
Egocentric thinking centers on the self.
People who engage in empathetic thinking consider their view as one possible interpretation of
the situation and actively work to learn what other people are thinking.
Essay Questions
1) What is a business process? Define activities.
A business process is a network of activities, resources, facilities, and information that interact to
achieve some business function. Activities are collections of related tasks that receive inputs and
process those inputs to produce outputs. Activities can be manual (people following procedures),
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, automated (hardware directed by software), or a combination of manual and automated.
2) List the components of a business process.
The components of a business process include:
1. Activities
2. Decisions
3. Roles
4. Resources
5. Repository
6. Data flow
3) Briefly describe a repository.
A repository is a collection of business records. A repository can be a cardboard box, a notebook,
a list, an Excel spreadsheet, a database, or even a collection of databases. Repositories hold the
collective memory of the organization. One of the major considerations in the design of
information systems is determining how many repositories should exist, or, equivalently, how
much data should be stored in particular repositories.
4) What are resources in a business process?
Resources are people, facilities, or computer programs that are assigned to roles. One way to
improve the performance of a business process is to add resources to roles. One way to reduce
costs is to reduce the number of people fulfilling a role. Another way to reduce costs is to replace
human resources with computer-based resources.
5) Describe the process of automation against the background of the five-component
framework of an information system.
The five components of an information system are hardware, software, data, procedures, and
people. They are arranged symmetrically in the framework. The outermost components,
hardware and people, are both actors; they can take actions. The software and procedure
components are both sets of instructions: Software is instructions for hardware, and procedures
are instructions for people. Finally, data is the bridge between the computer side on the left and
the human side on the right. When an activity in a business process is handled by an automated
system, it means that work formerly done by people following procedures has been moved so
that computers now do that work by following instructions in software. Thus, the automation of a
process activity consists of moving work from the right-hand side of the five-component IS
framework to the left.
6) Define information.
The most common definition of information is that information is knowledge derived from data,
where data is defined as recorded facts or figures.
7) Explain data with an example.
Data is defined as recorded facts or figures. The fact that an employee of an organization earns
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