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How to control systems costs

The business lives with the delivered system and therefore needs to specify what level of performance and cost it is willing to tolerate. But how does it do this?

This brief Guide gives Project Sponsors, and their governance teams, information on 12 key system cost drivers so that they can specify their systems performance and cost criteria on business terms.

This Guide puts the business in control of its downstream systems costs.
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I once saw an executive specify a nation-wide sub-second response time for a ‘Staff absentee notification’ transaction. This executive had no idea of the huge additional cost his performance standard would incur. 

Conversely, we’ve seen system developers make changes to system specifications that nullify the whole point of the project.

It is to address these sorts of issue that this Guide was written.

This Guide gives you 12 systems cost drivers and describes the parameters available and their respective trade-offs in business terms so that you can control your system’s delivery and ongoing costs.

This Guide does not enable you to compute the resultant costs, but does enable you to control the key levers at your disposal. We also give you recommendations that can help.

This Guide is intended to ensure you don’t pay for a Rolls Royce when you wanted a basic Ford.

  1. How to specify your critical system service level, quality and cost drivers
  2. How to define your requirements criteria
  3. How to define your interfaces criteria
  4. How to define your data management criteria
  5. How to define your data security criteria
  6. How to control your solution selection
  7. How to control solution delivery
  8. How to control your solutions’ speed of delivery
  9. How to control your system’s availability requirements
  10. How to control your systems response requirements
  11. How to control your system’s ongoing operations requirements
  12. How to control your system’s ease of use requirements
  13. How to control your system’s standards compliance
  • Project Sponsors - to understand the systems cost levers they have control of
  • Governance teams - to help the Sponsor define the desired systems costs
  • Project Practitioners - to help them understand the business’ solution performance and cost requirements
  • CIOs - to help them help the Sponsors make effective decisions
  • Auditors - to understand the key system cost control levers
  • Enables business managers to decide, on an informed business base, the 12 major systems cost drivers
  • Gives you a means of communicating your priority design criteria to your project and technical teams
  • Provides performance benchmarks that the acceptance of the system can be evaluated against
  • Puts you, the business, in control of your ongoing systems costs