Business Case for Investment
Introduction
In the case for investment, the purpose is to initiate the drive for a change to create an advantage to the company. Other purposes for the business case for investment are to measure the proposed project, isolate the goals of the business and the upcoming project, also to specify the parameters of a successful launch of the product implementation. By using the appropriate technology it will not only advance the productivity, but have a positive impact on income and the mitigation of loss for the company. This is a strong motivation for investment. As an outline of the project, the business case will show this proposed project as an advantageous investment. This will discuss the prototyping, testing, accessibility, prototyping and how the project will be implemented.
Prototyping Environments and Processes
IT professionals can use one of two ways to create process environments and prototypes. One approach is the tradition and the other is simulated. When using a traditional way of creating the prototype or process environment, the business problems and situations do not come up immediately. This creates a schism between the prototyping and the actual environment of the business. Often the daily business environments do not necessarily compare with the prototype business environments. And frequently the business strategies do not line up with the various business environments. Just because something transpires in a prototype does not mean that is what will happen in the real world, or the other way around. Usually, using a prototype only provides part of the functionality and can be vastly different from the actual results. Those that use a prototype might think it to be a working model and accept it rather than having nothing else to use. The Business Case portion goes over the cost, drivers and advantages with which the businesses can identify, while at the same time analyzing the chances of migrating to Shared Services.
The other approach is simulation based. This type of environment is one in which real system data is used in real time. In this approach it is beneficial to the team developing the project because it is more probably able to match the problem to a real solution. Prototypes of this type use actual data not “made up” information and therefore users and those being trained as users are more able to apply them to actual business systems.
This real data will produce real results and the team can then evaluate and analyze the prototypes right away and give them the performance metrics and index them as needed prior to the product’s final release. The simulation prototypes will match the solutions to the business processes.
Prototyping environments include the following processes:
- Design interfaces
- Design data conversion
- Develop specific business processes and development specifications
- Setup prototyping environment(s)
- Design mitigation controls
- Design security protocols
One of the prototyping environments is called Prototyping for Real Time Systems, or PERTS. It has resources access for use in applications, but also has a simulation environment in order to analyze, validate and evaluate systems. This is necessary to adapt an environment for the purpose of prototyping. The IT people and the systems analysts need to deal with the issues that may come up in prototyping by efficiently using the resources at hand.
Guimaraes surveyed Fortune 1000 companies and wrote in 1987 that one business that supported the use of disposable prototypes was quite redundant. The use of companies’ resources must be justifiable when using these prototypes.