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business benefits
Help for the Newly Minted Project Manager
Congratulations! Due to the recent [acquisition / divestiture, market expansion / contraction, organizational realignments, other] you have been identified as a Critical Resource for this particular bit of business process change. And, to help us implement these changes, you have been named the Project Manager for this effort. So now you are a Project Manager [...]
Chargebacks vs. Allocations – Defining IT’s Relationship with the Business
Some IT departments prefer chargebacks, while others do not. My own preference is to allocate IT costs to the business units, based on some reasonable balance of simplicity and accuracy. General services could be allocated by headcount, COGs, or revenues, with each business unit taking their proportional share. Some easily identifiable items might be allocated [...]
Defining Business Benefits: Hard and Soft
All projects should have a clear objective, a practical plan, and an understanding of the costs and benefits to get the thing done. Easy to say, but a lot of project teams struggle to crisply and clearly define specific business benefits. One way to move the process forward would be to have a clear understanding [...]
Calculating the Business Benefit of Effective Training Material (4 of 4)
In previous notes, I’ve written about the importance of training and, by extension, effective training material. It’s a common requirement in many organizations … … well, actually more of a “nice to have”, am I right? Truly effective training material is difficult to create (at least, to create material that does the job), and difficult [...]
Quantifying Business Benefit of Collaboration Tools (or, What Is This Meeting Costing Me?)
This post started off as an excuse to experiment with Google Docs, and this really neat feature I discovered – embedding a spreadsheet in a web page as a sharing method. However, it struck me as a potential way to cost justify the time, effort, and expense of implementing collaboration systems with the Most Cynical [...]
IT Budget Hacking (w$$t)
Some block-and-tackle IT management stuff for today – taking a long, hard look at the IT budget, a task that is less-than-pleasant for many. Most of my peers have already cut any and all low hanging fruit – it’s time to start thinking aggressively. Software Maintenance for the Small Stuff Most have concentrated on their [...]
If I Told You a Fractal Solution, Could You Change the CEO’s Mind?
As the new year approaches, debates over the “value” of IT and business projects intensify; it’s not holiday stress, but the excitement of the approaching New [fiscal] Year. Lately, I’m hearing more about the struggle to quantify business value, especially when selecting those few projects that will “make the cut”. We will definitely iterate on [...]
Business Benefits of Social Networks Exist, but …
When I see / read articles like this, or hear the breathless claims of vendors, pundits, and True Believers, I’ll privately chuckle to myself. All of this stuff – social networking, collaboration, and innovation – are 21st century takes on good old Knowledge Management (KM), circa 1998. Do these sound like presentations from your recent [...]
Do you want it good or fast? Prioritizing Time-to-Value over Requirements
I have a background in software product development, iterative “methodologies”, and the sort of fast-twitch life cycle that characterizes entrepreneurial startups, high-growing businesses, and “lean” process improvement projects. Unfortunately, this style is also favored by departmental developer wannabes, sloppy coders, and impatient Gen-Y newbies that want to apply a consumer products mentality to corporate IT. [...]
Five More Realities for Driving Business Value from Technology
Dennis McDonald’s recent post listed Ten Realities of Managing and Using Technology to Generate Business Value. I think a few of these items need some elaboration … Implementing a technology based solution without understanding the costs is a big mistake … and most projects only consider TCI – Total Cost of Implementation. This typically includes [...]
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