Information Technology Investment

From the individual to the largest organization, everyone today has to make investments in IT. Making a smart investment that will best satisfy all the necessary decision-making criteria requires careful and inclusive analysis. This textbook provides an up-to-date, in-depth understanding of the methodologies available to aid in this complex process of multi-criteria decision-making. It guides readers on the process of technology acquisition ? what methods to use to make IT investment decisions, how to choose the technology and justify its selection, and how the decision will impact the organization.Unique to this textbook are both financial investment models and more complex decision-making models from the field of management science so that readers can extend the analysis benefits to enhance and confirm their IT investment choices. The wide range of methodologies featured in the book gives readers the opportunity to customize their best-fit solutions for their unique IT decision situation. This textbook is especially ideal for educators and students involved in programs dealing with technology management, operations management, applied finance, operations research, and industrial engineering.A complimentary copy of the ?Instructor's Manual and Test Bank? and the PowerPoint presentations of the text materials are available for all instructors who adopt this book as a course text. Please send your request to [email protected].

From the individual to the largest organization, everyone today has to make investments in IT. Making a smart investment that will best satisfy all the necessary decision-making criteria requires careful and inclusive analysis. This textbook provides an up-to-date, in-depth understanding of the methodologies available to aid in this complex process of multi-criteria decision-making. It guides readers on the process of technology acquisition — what methods to use to make IT investment decisions, how to choose the technology and justify its selection, and how the decision will impact the organization. Unique to this textbook are both financial investment models and more complex decision-making models from the field of management science so that readers can extend the analysis benefits to enhance and confirm their IT investment choices. The wide range of methodologies featured in the book gives readers the opportunity to customize their best-fit solutions for their unique IT decision situation. This textbook is especially ideal for educators and students involved in programs dealing with technology management, operations management, applied finance, operations research, and industrial engineering. A complimentary copy of the ‘Instructor's Manual and Test Bank’ and the PowerPoint presentations of the text materials are available for all instructors who adopt this book as a course text. Please send your request to [email protected]. Errata(s) Errata (47 KB)

From the individual to the largest organization, everyone today has to make investments in information technology. Making a good investment that will best satisfy all the necessary decision criteria requires a careful and inclusive analysis. "Information Technology Investment: Decision-Making Methodology is a textbook that will provide the understanding of methodologies available to aid in this area of complex, multi-criterion decision-making. It presents a detailed, step-by-step set of procedures and methodologies that readers can use immediately to improve their IT investment decision-making. Unique to this textbook are both financial investment models and more complex decision-making models from management science, so users can extend the analysis benefits to confirm and enhance the ideal IT investment choices.

Praise for IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step "Bryan Maizlish and Robert Handler bring their deep experience in IT 'value realization' to one of the most absent of all IT management practices--portfolio management. They capture the essence of universally proven investment practices and apply them to the most difficult of challenges--returning high strategic and dollar payoffs from an enterprise's IT department. The reader will find many new and rewarding insights to making their IT investments finally return market leading results." --John C. Reece, Chairman and CEO, John C. Reece & Associates, LLC Former deputy commissioner for modernization and CIO of the IRS "IT Portfolio Management describes in great detail the critical aspects, know-how, practical examples, key insights, and best practices to improve operational efficiency, corporate agility, and business competitiveness. It eloquently illustrates the methods of building and integrating a portfolio of IT investments to ensure the realization of maximum value and benefit, and to fully leverage the value of all IT assets. Whether you are getting started or building on your initial success in IT portfolio management, this book will provide you information on how to build and implement an effective IT portfolio management strategy." --David Mitchell, President and CEO, webMethods, Inc. "I found IT Portfolio Management very easy to read, and it highlights many of the seminal aspects and best practices from financial portfolio management. It is an important book for executive, business, and IT managers." --Michael J. Montgomery, President, Montgomery & Co. "IT Portfolio Management details a comprehensive framework and process showing how to align business and IT for superior value. Maizlish and Handler have the depth of experience, knowledge, and insight needed to tackle the challenges and opportunities companies face in optimizing their IT investment portfolios. This is an exceptionally important book for executive leadership and IT business managers, especially those wanting to build a process-managed enterprise." --Peter Fingar, Executive Partner Greystone Group, coauthor of The Real-Time Enterprise and Business Process Management (BPM): The Third Wave "A must-read for the non-IT manager who needs to understand the complexity and challenges of managing an IT portfolio. The portfolio management techniques, analysis tools, and planning can be applied to any project or function." --Richard "Max" Maksimoski, Senior Director R&D, The Scotts Company "This book provides an excellent framework and real-world based approach for implementing IT portfolio management. It is a must-read for every CIO staff considering how to strategically and operationally impact their company's bottom line." --Donavan R. Hardenbrook, New Product Development Professional, Intel Corporation

It would seem that business investment in information technology (IT) is at root no different from business investment in anything else. After a careful consideration of the costs of the investment and its anticipated benefits, a decision is made as to whether the benefits of the investment outstrip the costs and by how much. If the benefits are competitive with other investment alternatives (say, a major marketing campaign), then the business will commit financial resources to the IT proposal. Otherwise it won't. This decision making process is at the heart of capital budgeting. Senior executives have been making IT investment decisions for well over three decades. So why is the measurement of IT investment payoff so difficult and controversial? Why do we need a book dealing with contemporary approaches to measuring IT investment payoff? Why have earlier approaches to measuring IT investment payoff proven unsatisfactory? In what respects have earlier approaches fallen short? Do we need to scrap earlier approaches entirely or can we find important improvements to these approaches such that they can be newly applied to effectively measure IT investment payoff in ways that are convincing to senior management? This book will help you to find improvements in existing methods for measuring IT investment payoff as well as to find new, innovative methods for addressing the value of emerging IT.0000 ø0.

Survey and study background In an effort to gain some answers on the 1ST capital investment (project selection) decision criteria used in practice, a survey was undertaken in 1990 of 80 American, British, Australian and New Zealand companies. A one-page survey form was used that provided 15 possible 1ST investment criteria, a means of indicating whether they are used or not, the percentage of projects to which each criterion is applied, and an overall ranking in terms of total project value for each criterion. The criteria are shown in Table 2.1. The criteria are categorized into financial, management, and development criteria. They were developed, first, through interviews with some 20 chief information officers (CIOs) in Britain and the United States. These CIOs were questioned on what criteria their organizations use in selecting 1ST investment projects, with the aim of developing a full list of the criteria used in practice. Secondly, the criteria and the form were tested and refined in a pilot study with some 12 companies. The criteria used in the survey and listed in Table 2.1 are primary level criteria.

If managed wisely, investments in information technology (IT) can enrich people's lives and improve organizational performance. For example, during the last decade the Internet has matured from being a technical novelty to a national resource where citizens can visit the Library of Congress or file their tax returns. Some organizations have realized substantial improvements in processing data and information by switching from centralized mainframe computing to decentralized personal computers linked by local area networks. The ability of software applications to locate and correlate relevant data in a data warehouse permits organizations to discover unknown fiscal or physical resource relationships and thus provide appropriate assistance where there had been none. The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996' was enacted to address many of the problems related to federal IT management.