Page 481 - Using MIS

company, hire employees to staff that function, and relearn figure out how to manage an important function in our
everything you ought to have learned in the first place. company, so you do it!’ You can’t get away from IS problems
“Gimme a break. Outsourcing is fool’s gold, an expen- by hiring someone else to manage them for you. At least you
sive leap away from responsibility. It’s like saying, ‘We can’t care about your bottom line.”

DisCussion Questions

1. Hiring an organization’s existing IS staff is common hiring organization. Does this phenomenon justify out-
practice when starting a new outsourcing arrangement. sourcing? Why or why not?
What are the advantages of this practice to the outsource 5. In what ways is outsourcing IS infrastructure like out-
vendor? What are the advantages to the organization? sourcing the company cafeteria? In what ways is it dif-
2. Suppose you work for an outsource vendor. How do you ferent? What general conclusions can you make about
respond to the charge that your managers care only about infrastructure outsourcing?
how they appear to their employer (the outsource vendor), 6. This guide assumes that the outsourcing agreement
not how they actually perform for the organization? is for the organization’s computing infrastructure.
3. Consider the statement “We can’t figure out how to man- Outsourcing for software development, as PRIDE is do-
age an important function in our company, so you do it!” ing, involves less direct involvement with the contractor.
Do you agree with the sentiment of this statement? If this Explain how your answers to questions 1–5 would be dif-
is true, is it necessarily bad? Why or why not? ferent for software outsourcing.
4. Explain how it is possible for an outsource vendor to 7. How do your answers to questions 1–5 differ if the out-
achieve economies of scale that are not possible for the sourcing agreement is just for PaaS resources?

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