IT Investment: Making a Business Case
Shows how to present an IT project s expenses in terms of an investment in business practices and processes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS IT Investment: Making a Business Case
Chapter 3: The art of evaluation
The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it-I don't need to believe it.
Carl Jung, interview, (1959)
'One can't believe impossible things', said Alice. 'I dare say you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, (1872)
3.1 Introduction
The IT business case can be regarded as part of the general IT evaluation activity within the organisation and one which is increasingly seen as central to the delivery of quality IT management. It is not easy to ensure that any activity is being performed well if there are not mechanisms in place to monitor how that activity is living up to the exceptions of its consumers. This is the role of IT evaluation activities and the IT investment business case sets the standard to which the IT evaluation activities need to be compared.
Furthermore to understand the mechanisms behind the IT business case it is necessary to examine the concepts and techniques used in evaluation. These become especially important when the IT investment business case is used as part of the IT project management process.
Most of the concepts and techniques used in evaluation are not new. Many of them have been used...
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