If you lack time and need high-ROI technology investments, then, The Business Case Checklist can help you. And it costs less than half-an-hour of professional consulting! This is the first checklist that helps writers and reviewers of technology business cases make faster decisions and better technology investments. In this checklist, you'll find: 1. 12 fundamental questions to ask of any business case. 2. A template for all your technology investment decisions. 2. 73 best practices to implement this checklist and help you make faster, better technology investments immediately. 3. The 5 universal principles for technology investment, offering you lessons from 25 years of experience and 51-book research. 4. An investment grade to guide and communicate your decision. The Business Case Checklist will help you: -- Justify your technology investment if you are a project manager or technology executive. -- Sell your technology with a fact-based business case if you offer technology products, services, or solutions. -- Review business cases quickly and effectively if you are a business, technology, or financial executive asked to fund technology investments.
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About the Author
John Finneran is the principal of Business Case Pro. He specializes in writing IT business cases and technology white papers. John Finneran is an Oxford University law graduate and holds several post-graduate financial qualifications including Chartered Financial Analyst ("CFA"). He offers business case tools, training, and white paper writing services at www.businesscasepro.com
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great tool for evaluating IT investments,
By
This review is from: The Business Case Checklist: Everything You Need to Review a Business Case, Avoid Failed Projects, and Turn Technology into ROI (Paperback)
I've found this book to be extremely useful. I realized a few years ago how important the business case is to designing effective IT solutions, and read several books and online articles trying to learn from others' insights. Several of the books that I consulted are listed in this book's bibliography. Their treatment of the business case has been distilled into an easily assimilated summary, which is deployed as a tool that can be used for maximizing financial returns on technological investments, as well as for guarding against falling prey to fraudulent promises.
The tool is a checklist. In December 2007, The New Yorker magazine published surgeon and author Atul Gawande's article, "The Checklist", in which he describes intensive care specialist Peter Pronovost's successful campaign to reduce infection, disease and death in one hospital's ICU (intensive care unit) by introducing a pre-silicon, much maligned and seldom deployed tool: the checklist. He began with a 5-step checklist capturing the simple but necessary precautions against infections resulting from line insertion (like a urinary catheter or abdominal drain). Using that checklist for one month to monitor a hospital medical staff's line insertions, ICU nurses found that doctors omitted at least one step in more than one-third of the cases. Over the next year, nurses, who were authorized to intervene if they saw doctors skipping a step in the checklist, reduced the infection rate from 11% to zero. Over two years, use of this simple5-step checklist prevented 43 infections and 8 deaths, and saved the hospital two million dollars in costs. I don't know if it was triggered by Gawande's article - his article is not mentioned in the bibliography, though his book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, is - but this book is a brilliant application of checklists to the business case. Stating the business case is a little-appreciated aspect of acquiring and selling information technology, or I should say that I have found that introducing the business case in a sales discussion brings both clarity and appreciation for both sides. The book's advice is presented in such a way that the same business case checklist can be used by both the vendor and the consumer of IT services and technology. Both need to consider the business case as a tool to help them make informed, smart decisions regarding capital expenditure. 12 steps are identified as essential to stating the business case, from understanding the context for perceived needs, to assessment of alternative solutions, to establishing criteria for the final go/no-go decision. Its central message is simple: understand a technology's features and functions in terms of how it will be used, and in terms of its benefits. IT professionals like me think we know what that means, but we often overlook one or two aspects because we are distracted by improvements or breakthroughs that have more immediate, obvious, or "wow" consequences. The Business Case Checklist works as a restraint against such over-enthusiasm. It reiterates that information technology is an investment, and should be treated as such. This is a given where huge sums of money are involved, as in large-scale, long-term defense contracts. But IRR (internal rate of return) and of NPV (net present value) are relevant for any project. Both are discussed here clearly and succinctly. If your company does not track the cost of capital, reading this will persuade you to initiate the practice. There are some pithy, memorable expressions throughout this very well-written book. I expect some of them will find their way into corporate presentations. A few candidates: "The principle is to reduce the probability of bad events through active management." "Clarity is a gateway standard." "Avoid unsubstantiated statements." I don't see anything in this book that is unnecessary; everything works toward establishing a high- quality baseline for evaluating the worth of IT investments.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Concise answer to problem of failed IT projects,
By Problem Solver (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Business Case Checklist: Everything You Need to Review a Business Case, Avoid Failed Projects, and Turn Technology into ROI (Paperback)
This book offers a concise yet actionable solution to the common problem of IT projects that don't deliver business value.
The checklist format works well in boiling down a lot of practical information. It's a time saving, well researched, and crisply written book. I can see The Business Case Checklist working well for any major or complex IT project. It will help you make good investments, but just as importantly, it will help you screen out bad investments. Given some of the ROI claims out in the market, this is a very important function.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable and important,
By J. Scott Shipman (Annandale, VA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Business Case Checklist: Everything You Need to Review a Business Case, Avoid Failed Projects, and Turn Technology into ROI (Paperback)
This title is expensive, but very useful---guarantee the reader will find a good idea or something not thought of previously on every page. Highly recommended.
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