Last time I talked about why it’s so
hard to estimate and measure business value. This time, I offer the
outline of a solution that has worked for many IT shops.
But first I have to give due credit and say this is not my idea. I
learned this many years ago from a very smart guy named Mahan Khalsa
and his course called “Helping Clients Succeed.”
Here’s the method that we use, in brief:
- Define the real opportunities, challenges and issues. For example,
“implementing ITIL” is usually not the opportunity. The real
opportunity may be that “the business doesn’t believe that we’re cost
effective” or “the business wants faster delivery than we can provide
so they’re going outside” or “we’re so busy fire-fighting we don’t have
time for the real proactive work that we know needs to get done.” Spend
a LOT of time in this area.
“In a crisis if I had only an hour I’d spend the first 50 minutes
defining the problem and the last 10 minutes solving it.” -Albert
Einstein
- Find or develop evidence. This means DATA, not opinion.
For example, if your core problem is “we’re so busy fire-fighting we
don’t have time for the real proactive work that we know needs to get
done,” then how would you show that in terms of measurable data? Would
it be projects completed on time, or total Incident volume, or
percentage Incidents solved at 3rd level versus 1st level? Or (most
likely) some combination of several of these?
If you can’t find or can’t develop evidence, you either haven’t
defined the right set of problems, or you need to pause the project and
do some assessment work first. As Mahan says, eventually some executive
will say “Before we write a check for this, could someone please tell
me how we’ll know it’s money well spent?”
- Find or develop Impact. This part is relatively easy,
compared to defining the problem and getting evidence. Simply ask a few
questions:
- how do you measure it (the impact)?
- what is it now (current state)?
- what would you like it to be (future state)?
- what’s the value of the difference (impact)?
- what’s the value over time (whatever timeframe your management uses for looking at this type of funding decision)?
But what about those soft, squishy outcomes I mentioned earlier?
Maybe your problem was “the business doesn’t trust us to deliver
on-time, on-budget so we’re in danger of having some functions
outsourced.” Well how do you get evidence and measure the impact of
improved trust? Well, this is the part that’s really hard for
co-workers to do, especially IT people. It involves asking emotional
questions, talking about personnel and HR issues.
So, what’s your big problem that you need to solve? What’s the
nagging fear that’s gnawing on you, driving you to look for solutions?
Also, check out our new White Paper on “Developing the Busines Value for ITIL”.
If you’re involved in building business cases and scopes for large projects, I encourage you to check out Mahan Khalsa’s stuff: Helping Clients Succeed
Till next time, keep up the good work.
Scott Braden
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