CS507 Assignment # 1

Information System (CS507)
Spring 2010
Assignment No. 1
Due Date:
Your assignment must be uploaded/submitted before or on 27th April 2010.
Max Marks: 20
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Q. 1: How can you describe information in its ideal form? Moreover how ideal information would help us regarding decision making in our routine activities?
(Marks: 10) Answer:
Ideal Information:
Information is said to be in its ideal form if it is:
1- Periodically/ continuously updated:
The information should be updated from time to time so that whenever accessed, the user should get the most recent information and be fully informed.
2- Efficient Processing:
Data should not be kept unprocessed for a long period of time; rather it should be processed at regular intervals which help in effective decision making.
3- Value driven:
The information gathered from a certain environment in our computerized systems should add value to the user’s knowledge.
4- Audience Centered:
The information to be in its ideal form should exhibit the characteristic of being audience centered, so that everyone receives his relevant part of information out of the aggregate.
Ideal information and decision making:
In the absence of an accurate, reliable and well-timed information people and organizations will be unable to make decisions effectively; they will be unable to help or persuade others to make better decisions and no one will be able to ascertain whether the decisions made by particular individuals or organizations were the best ones that could have been made at that time.
Therefore information in its ideal form (being accurate and reliable) is vital for the effective decision making in almost every aspect of business whether it is undertaken by individuals, community organizations or governments. It is an essential component of any effort to persuade businesses to make better and optimal decisions from the ones which they might have made in the absence of such information.

Q. 2: Identify and explain different decision making approaches.
(Marks: 10)
Answer:
Following are the different decision making approaches:
a. Structured
b. Unstructured and
c. Semi structured

Structured decision making approach:
Structured decision making is a general term for carefully organized analysis of problems in order to reach decisions which are focused clearly on achieving fundamental objectives.
In structured decision making, procedures are predefined for solving routine repetitive problems. These decisions are made under the established situations and are preplanned which is possible only when we have fully understood the situation.


Unstructured decision making approach:

We use to make unstructured decisions when the situation is complex and no standard solutions exist for resolving the situation; when some or all of the structural elements of the decision situation are undefined, ill-defined or unknown. For example:
Goals may be poorly defined, alternatives may be incomplete or non-comparable, choice criteria may be hard to measure or difficult to link to goals.
The unstructured decisions are basically the non-programmed decisions which are happening for the first time and therefore require individual judgment, evaluation and insight varying on case-to-case basis. That’s why such types of decisions are creative and are not preplanned.

Semi-structured decision making approach:
We follow semi-structured decision making approach where some aspects of the problem are structured and others are unstructured.
Such decisions lie in the middle of structured and unstructured approaches and this is where most of our true decision support systems are focused on. Decisions of this type are characterized of having some agreement on the data, process, and evaluation to be used but are also typified by efforts to retain some level of human judgment in the decision making process.