Business Cases for IT      
Beyond Costs Benefits Analysis

Code:

 IS130-026

Series:

 Information Management

Duration:

 2 days

Introduction
Characteristics of Projects
Project costs and benefits
Systems development lifecycle
Costs, benefits and the SDLC
Project definition: The business case
Business Case activities

Requirements Definition
What are requirements
Functional requirements
Non-functional requirements
Information gathering
Requirements catalogue

Benefits
SPIRACIS: A benefits God?
Benefits matrix
Types of benefit
The time value of money
Estimating benefits

Application functions
Components of a Workflow Diagram
Functions
Component types
Functions and data flow diagrams

Estimating Development Effort
Techniques for estimating effort
Software metrics
Function point analysis
Complexity
Application characteristics
Weighting Factors
Function points and effort
Function points and lines of code

Costs
Software chart of accounts
Cost categories
Estimating development costs
Estimating software maintenance costs
Estimating operating costs
Comparing estimated with actual costs

Costs Benefits Analysis
Return on Investment
Payback period
NPV: Net present value
IRR: Internal Rate of Return
Criteria for selecting projects
Project accounting

Risk Analysis
Project risks
Comparing investment alternatives
Risk assessment
Expressing risk as a probability of returns
Decision trees

Business Cases for IT


After completing this course, students will be able to:

  • Understand and apply business case concepts.
  • Describe the relationship between business case, benefits, costs and the application architecture.
  • Appreciate the importance of quantified costs benefits analysis and stakeholder analysis.
  • Utilise written materials and worksheets that can be applied readily in the workplace.

Prerequisites:


Familiarity with business environments and business information systems.