Author(s):
Bob Glushko
glushko@ischool.berkeley.edu
Course: DE + IA (INFO 243), Spring 2008
Date: 3 March 2008
Title: ASSIGNMENT 3: Process and Information Patterns
There are 12 questions in this assignment. Books might be written to answer some of these questions, BUT YOUR ANSWERS DO NOT NEED TO BE MORE THAN 100-200 WORDS, AND SOME CAN BE ADEQUATELY ANSWERED USING MANY FEWER WORDS. Even the questions that seem open-ended should be answered in at most a couple of paragraphs. If you find yourself writing more than that for an answer, try harder to write less.
Some of the questions have objectively correct answers, while others can be argued in more than one way. Your thinking will almost certainly be more focused and your answers sharper if you refer back to your lecture notes and to the pattern resources you have explored in the Pattern Scavenger Hunt and in assigned readings.
Pay special attention to the 12 numbered questions here. Make sure you answer all 12… i.e., your report should have 12 numbered answers in it! I have itemized every question this way to make it easier on you (so you'll focus on each question and won't accidentally skip some) and to make it easier for us to grade your assignments. Your work should include the section titles and should number each answer, just as the questions are.
Please submit your work in electronic format on the syllabus page (or as an email attachment to both the professor and the TA) before class on Monday March 3, and bring a printed copy to class.
The Bullwhip Effect
It is more costly to a retailer to run out of a product than to carry excess inventory, but when this principle is followed in a myopic manner bad things happen like the "Bullwhip Effect." The "Bullwhip Effect" in supply chains is the magnification of demand variability as it moves up a supply chain. As demand for a product filters back up the chain from the consumer toward the original source of the component raw materials, that demand becomes more and more erratic and swings in larger and large cycles. Read the two-page article that summarizes the classic paper on the Bullwhip Effect at http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i243/s08/assignments/A3-BusinessPatterns/bullwhip.html and then answer these questions:
(Q1) What kinds of information exchanges can best reduce the Bullwhip Effect?
(Q2) Can the Bullwhip Effect be completely eliminated?
Auto Industry Standards Efforts
These next two questions require you to read and interpret a short news story called "Driving Standards" that appeared in Information Week at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18201098
(Q3) If this project proceeds as planned, what companies / parties will be able to exchange information with each other?
(Q4) What types of documents will be exchanged? (Some are mentioned explicitly, and others are implied in the article.)
Information Exchanges in Auctions
The most common auction pattern is the "forward" or "English" auction typified by eBay, in which one seller offers something to many potential buyers.
(Q5) You can describe this type of auction as a pattern of information exchanges. Which entities are exchanging information and what information are they exchanging (in terms of document types or the essential content)?
(Q6) What is the sequence or choreography of the information exchanges (who initiates the exchanges, and what event(s) end the exchanges)?
Information Exchanges in Multichannel Retail
Some retailers that started out with physical "brick and mortar" stores have created web sites (for example, the Barnes & Noble book chain), and some web merchants have been acquired by established retailers (for example, drugstore.com is now part of RiteAid). This "multichannel" strategy poses risks and opportunities because there are many design choices about the relationship of the user's experience within and across the channels. Many of these design choices relate to the information that is obtained -- implicitly (thorugh observations) or explicitly (as a result of queries or transactions) -- from customers in each channel, and the extent to which this information is then shared with the other channel.
(Q7) What information about a customer's activities in an online store can be recorded?
(Q8) What information about a user's activities in a physical "bricks and mortar" store can be recorded?
(Q9) What information from the online store can be used to provide better functionality or service (or change the "default" experience) in the "bricks and mortar" store? Is there any information obtained in the online store that should NOT be used by the "bricks and mortar" store?
(Q10) What information obtained in the 'bricks and mortar" store can be used to provide better functionality or service (or change the "default" experience) in the online store? Is there any information obtained in the "bricks and mortar" store that should NOT be used by the online store?
(Q11) Which design and implementation issues in "multichannel retail" have similarities to those in the debate about electronic medical records?
(Q12) Which design and implementation issues in "multichannel retail" are most different from those in the debate about electronic medical records?