Business Cases & Project Prioritization

Business Case Analysis

• A business case should be comprehensive and easily understood.
• It describes the project, justifies the need to proceed, and estimates the project's financial impact.
• Key questions to address:
  • Why are we doing this project?
  • How much will it cost, and how long will it take?
  • Are there any risks involved?
  • How will we measure success?
  • What alternatives exist?

Information Systems Projects

• System requests can be driven by:
  • The need for stronger controls.
  • The need for more support.
  • The desire for improved service.
  • The pressure to reduce costs.
  • The need to provide more information.
  • The goal of better performance.
• Internal factors affecting IT projects:
  • Strategic plans.
  • Top managers.
  • User demands.
  • IT department needs.
  • Existing systems and data.
  • Company finances.
• External factors affecting IT projects:
  • Government regulations.
  • Technology advancements.
  • Supplier capabilities.
  • Overall economy.
  • Competitor actions.
  • Customer expectations.

Evaluation of Systems Requirements

• System requests can be evaluated by a systems review committee or a computer resources committee.
• Systems Request Forms must be streamlined, consistent, easy to understand, and include clear instructions.
• The request forms should indicate required supporting documents and be submitted electronically.

Systems Review Committee

• A broader viewpoint enables a committee to establish priorities more effectively than an individual.
• One person's bias is less likely to affect decisions.
• Disadvantage: Action on requests must wait until the committee meets.
• Disadvantage: Members might favor projects requested by their own departments.
• Disadvantage: Internal political differences could delay important decisions.

Overview of Feasibility

• Feasibility studies can range from simple to exhaustive, depending on the nature of the request.
• Initial fact-finding involves studying organizational charts, performing interviews, reviewing current documentation, observing operations, and surveying users.
• A feasibility study examines operational, technical, economic, and schedule factors.

Operational Feasibility

• How effectively the proposed system will be used after development.

• It can be affected by organizational culture.

• Its measurement requires careful study.

• Questions to consider:

  • Is the project supported by management and users?
  • Will the new system result in workforce reduction?
  • Are there legal or ethical issues?

Economic Feasibility

• Projected benefits of a proposed system should outweigh the total cost of ownership (TCO).

• Determination of TCO requires the cost analysis of:

  • People, including IT staff and users.
  • Hardware and equipment.
  • Software.
  • Formal and informal training.
  • Licenses and fees.
  • Consulting expenses.
  • Facility costs.

• Tangible costs are measured in dollars.

• Intangible costs can significantly affect organizational performance, such as low employee morale or damage to the company image.

• Tangible benefits result from a decrease in expenses or an increase in revenues. Example: a system that cuts overtime.

• Intangible benefits are important to the company despite the inability to measure them in dollars; for example, a user-friendly system improves employee satisfaction.

Technical Feasibility

• The technical resources required to acquire and use the system.
• Assessment questions:
  • Does the company have the necessary hardware, software, and network resources?
  • Does the company have the required technical expertise?
  • Does the proposed platform have sufficient capacity for future needs?
  • Will a prototype be required?

Schedule Feasibility

• Determines if the project can be implemented in an acceptable time frame.
• Key issues affecting schedule feasibility include:
  • The interaction between time and costs.
  • The company or IT team's control over factors affecting schedule feasibility.
  • Firm timetables established by management.
  • Conditions that must be satisfied during system development.
  • Risks posed by an accelerated schedule.

Project Management Overview

• Project Management: Planning, scheduling, monitoring and controlling, and reporting on information system development
• Successful projects must be completed on time, within budget, meet requirements, and satisfy users

Project Triangle

• Represents project management, including cost, scope and time.
• The challenge is to find optimal balance among the factors.
• Any change in one leg of the triangle will affect the other legs.

Project Manager Responsibilities

• Project manager's role:
  • Project planning: Identifying all project tasks and estimating the completion time and cost of each.
  • Project scheduling: Creating a specific timetable showing tasks, their dependencies, and critical tasks that might delay the project.
  • Project monitoring: Guiding, supervising, and coordinating the project team's workload.
  • Project reporting: Creating regular progress reports for management, users, and the project team itself.

Creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• Work breakdown structure (WBS): Breaking down a project into a series of smaller tasks
• Steps:

-Listing the tasks -Estimating task duration (in hours, days, or weeks) -Time estimates made by project managers should include the best-case estimate (B), probable-case estimate (P), and worst-case estimate (W)

Factors Affecting Duration

-Project Size -Identify all project tasks and the time required for each -Consider any time taken for events that affect productivity

-Human Resources -Assemble and guide a development team that possesses the skills required and experience to handle the project

• Be prepared to deal with factors that could affect the project's timeline

-Experience With Similar Projects -Develop time and cost estimates based on the resources used for similar, previously developed information -Systems such as hardware, software, network systems.

-Constraints -Define system requirements that can be achieved realistically within the required constraints -Calculate resources needed in the absence of constraints

Explore business case goals, key questions it answers, and system request form essentials. Covers systems review committees, project duration factors, and Work Breakdown Structures. Includes advantages and disadvantages of using a Systems Review Committee.