Alternative View

Claiming that the overall return on the IT investment is sufficient is an exercise in double-speak. The goal of IT management is to produce business benefit from 100 percent of the IT budget. While some returns may be higher than others, all major budget expenditures must be evaluated in terms of business benefit. Allowing one the comfort of thinking that support for a system should be continued because it was running last year may result in inefficient spending. All systems and investments need to be evaluated on a regular basis and those whose ongoing value is not increasing should be considered fodder for cancellation and the funds saved or earmarked to new projects with increased ROI. Likewise, assuming a 66 percent failure rate in new projects should not be tolerated. While all projects may not succeed, all should serve as learning tools to improve the success/failure rate over time. The root cause for the poor perception of IT value is less rooted in communication and more a result of poor execution of initiatives.