Page #130 (20.1 Low Costs)

20.2 High Benefits

High benefits means selecting SPI methods with the largest number of benefits. High benefits means wading through the plethora of SPI methods that are available and discarding SPI methods with low ROI. Instead, select SPI methods that yield the maximum number of benefits. High benefits involves choosing great value. For profit-driven commercial firms, this is intuitively obvious. The basic goal and objective of the commercial firm are to make money, make more money, and then make even more money. Commercial firms intuitively use ROI tools to select, use, and apply SPI methods that yield the greatest number of benefits.

However, even the large, nonprofit firm is interested in using SPI methods with the largest possible ROI. The large, nonprofit organization uses SPI methods with high ROI in order to optimize its SPI budget. Doing so reduces its SPI budget to a manageable level, and the organization receives the greatest number of products and services per fiscal year. Benevolent donors bestow a large number of resources upon large, nonprofit organizations. They must satisfy their donors by providing the highest possible quality products and services at the lowest possible cost. Yes, large, nonprofit organizations are interested in the highest number of benefits and largest ROI too.

However, it is important not to evaluate benefits independent of costs. For instance, the Personal Software Process ^SM offers the highest number of benefits at $1,117,499 per person, but these benefits come at a high price of $26,400 per person. Consider the benefits of Capability Maturity Model Integration , which amount to $3,023,064. However, Capability Maturity Model Integration comes at a steep price of $277,058 per person. High benefits with high costs are simply unattainable for the average commercial firm or large, nonprofit organization. Identify and apply SPI methods with large benefits, but not at the expense of the future of the organization.

SPI is funded by an organization's revenues or profits, whether commercial or nonprofit. This money can go to shareholders, bonuses, capital improvements, or it can even be donated to charities. Now that executives are getting used to the idea of SPI, monies for SPI are easier to obtain than ever before. We have the basic responsibility to maximize the value of our expenditures, make more money, and increase our revenues .