Managing the business case development in inter-organizational IT projects: a methodology and its application

The business case (BC) is an artifact that is used to justify an investment in terms of its expected costs, benefits and risks. In the field of IT it is commonly used to justify an investment into an IT project in order to get the investment approval from upper management. Decision makers also may use the business case to compare different projects within a portfolio and decide into which they want to invest money. While the general role of business cases in single organizations is rather clear and subject to most BC research, its role and importance in an inter-organizational setting are less articulated and researched. \ud The fact that the role of the BC is rather clear in single organizations, however, does not mean that everything goes as planned and the expected benefits are achieved in time and within budget. Uncertainties related to both the cost and the benefit estimations included in the BC, may interfere greatly with the realization of the BC itself. While the estimation of the costs is a well-understood problem in a mature research domain, the specification of the benefits is often more challenging and less well understood and researched. \ud In this thesis we provide a better understanding of the problem of BC development in general, and in inter-organizational settings in particular. \ud Following design science as main research paradigm we develop our business case for inter-organizational projects (BC4IOP) methodology specifically for this problem domain. The methodology consists of the following three independent but complementary components: \ud - BM4IOP: a comprehensive benefits management method;\ud - VM4IOP: a method that explores how a network creates value and what the impact is on business case development;\ud - SID4IOP: a method that supports stakeholders to achieve agreement on the cost distribution of a shared project, by structurally disclosing more information. \ud We conclude that it is the combination of: the identification and specification of costs and benefits for an individual BC and the decision about the cost and benefit distribution in a shared BC, that make BC4IOP a strong and unique methodology

ES Implementations in Cross-organizational Settings: How Should the Business Case Look Like?

This paper describes my PhD research on the development of\ud realistic and innovative business case guidelines that can be used for complex information system implementations, such as cross-organizational ES implementations. I identify problems and solutions related to the issue of assessing the benefits of such complex implementations. Based on a structured literature review, a multidimensional benefit framework was developed. This is used as input into the ES business case guideline development process