Building analysis toolkits
January 12, 2009
I’m building a toolkit of models and methods I can use to answer questions.
Building analysis toolkits
I’m changing my plans a bit. I’m going to focus on models one might use to analyze a problem a question poses, and build a toolkit in my mind of things I can use to answer questions.
I went back and reviewed the screening exam questions from previous years that are posted on the CGU IST website, and I was a bit discouraged: the questions I’ve been making up and answering are easier than the ones that have actually been asked in the past. There were two reasons for this: there were questions about things that I hadn’t covered in my notes, and there were questions that went beyond the questions I had posed to myself in terms of difficulty. While I am mostly confident about my ability to answer my own questions. In the School’s own recommendations to students in preparing for the screening exam.
Being “fact smart” is clearly important, but is never sufficient for passing doctoral exam. You will be expected to demonstrate a conceptual grasp of the important ideas in each of several fields. You must be able to identify the basic questions and relevant conceptual frameworks that guide scholarship. Moreover, you must know who the prominent thinkers are, and how their writings have helped to shape the development of thought over time. In the take-home exam, you should also be prepared to offer your thoughts on current research priorities in the field. This would involve reflections on the key issues that need to be addressed, as well as the best methodologies or approaches for addressing those issues.
And they’re not joking, as I can see from the questions. I had, of course, already looked at them many times, but I haven’t looked at them since I started answering my self-posed questions. The question I had asked myself about up and coming technologies was:
Three technological forces which are currently impacting organizations are virtualization, cloud computing, and open source.. Discuss what they are, their impact on business goals and IT strategy.
Here’s a similar question that was actually given:
Three important phenomena are impacting the process of managing an IS “shop”: web services, open source software, and outsourcing. Identify some models and/or methods for managing IS policy and strategy, and explain how a CIO of a large organization could use them to analyze each of these phenomena. Note that different models and methods could be applied to analyze different phenomena.
which is much more in depth than my own question because it’s not just asking you about web services, open source, and outsourcing, not just about models a CIO might use to analyze future tech, but both simultaneously, plus “use the latter to analyze the former.”
