John makes note how the Business Case document should be revisited several times during the project life cycle. Doing so may have caught the changing environment and allowed the organization to mitigate the risk from the competitor.
John makes very valid points that I believe show an improper IT solution Project Delivery System. Laura Brandenburg notes in her blog that the Business Case document is often created under another name, or as I have noticed in many organizations the Business Case document is created, then it is used to develop the Project Charter and Project Design documents. These documents should not only be created but needs to visited by an IT Governance body during multiple steps in the IT solution Project Life Cycle; not just at project initiation. At each point it makes a “go/no go” decision as to whether to continue the project. This is where many organizations fail to follow through.
Take the simplified high-level Project Life Cycle that includes 5 phases: Initiation, Analysis, Design, Development and Implementation/Closure. Most organizations will make the “go/no go” decision on an IT business solution project either prior to the Initiation phase that kicks off the project or at the end of the phase, depending on how the organization defines its Project Delivery System. In most organizations that is the only time that the IT Governance body will rule on the value of the project.
If the IT business solution project had to go before the IT Governance body at the end of the Analysis, Design and Development phases as well as the Initiation phase then the organization has greatly increased its ability to mitigate risk in the project, especially from external forces.
As the project goes through each phase of the Project Life Cycle, the benefits, costs, requirements and risks are further defined. In John’s example, if our competitor launched their product while we were still in Design then our IT solution project went before the IT Governance body for its next “go/no go” decision. The IT Governance Body, being aware of the competitor’s product launch, can now say that the project benefits are no longer valid. The risk mitigation plan can be executed, which may include dropping the project all together. This reduces the cost to the organization as those resources can now move on to a more valid IT solution project.
So not only is it important to make sure that you build a Business Case document, by whatever name you may call it, but be sure it is visited several times during the project life cycle, by others outside of the project team, to ensure that the assumptions (benefits, costs, risks) therein contained remain valid. This along with making sure the proper stakeholders are involved greatly increases ensuring that the IT solution project maintains its value to the organization.
A common reference I hear in business today is that the Business Analyst (BA) is the bridge between the business and information technology staffs within the organization. This infers that the knowledge of getting from one to the other, or interacting with either is contained within the BA alone. The BA should not be the bridge, but the bridge builder. If the knowledge is contained only within the BA, if the BA should leave the organization, then the bridge is gone. If the BA is the bridge builder, then if he/she should leave, the knowledge remains within the Organization.
I had lunch today with one of our Cincinnati customers and he made the comment that his company had eliminated a lot of costs via their IT applications. He also said there was no more low hanging fruit in their IT applications. Everything is integrated and there are no easy changes. I laughed and said there is nothing easy any more; even my easy button quit talking!
Happy New Year!!! Welcome to a new year, new decade and a new beginning.
I feel ComputerWorld did not put enough emphasis on Security; this without doubt will be the biggest challenge for IT executives in the coming years. Open-source software may be an innovative money saver, but IT professionals still have concerns that networks could be vulnerable to viruses, cyberattacks and other intrusions.
I was reading
I am part of the LinkedIn community and a member of several groups in LinkedIn. One of the groups I am a member of is the IBM i Professionals group. I get a weekly summary of activity and sometimes there are comments on the posts that people have made. Usually there are no more than 3-5 comments. What caught my attention is a LinkedIn post that had 23 comments. The original post referenced this blog post:
In