Chapter 4. Developing the Business Case


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I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations , promises are promises ”but only performance is reality.

”Harold Geneen, Alvin Moscow
Managing , Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1984

A business case can determine whether a project is cost-effective . A business case is usually performed early in the project, normally after the portfolio analysis has prioritized the systems that should be considered for modernization. Because often more legacy systems are targeted for modernization than resources are available, a business case must be created for one or more of these projects. The business case must present a cost-benefit analysis, a financial advantage, or a competitive advantage to justify the modernization effort and associated implementation risks and must also reflect a believable and achievable story.

Even if resources are sufficient to modernize a legacy system, this does not mean that it should be done. Again, a legitimate business case must be made. Justifying a modernization effort is often more difficult than justifying a new application development effort, as modernization is often viewed as a last resort [Bisbal 99].

Portfolio analysis identified RSS as a system with high business value and low technical quality ”an ideal candidate for modernization. RSS has high business value because of its ability to perform operations that are fundamental to the retailer business: place and fill orders, maintain appropriate inventory stocks, order and replenish inventory, and share inventory among retail locations. On the other hand, as explained in Chapter 2, the technical quality of the system has seriously deteriorated after years of neglect. [1]

[1] A related question that should also be considered is why the system was neglected and what in the organization has changed that will prevent the replacement system from suffering from the same neglect.

In this chapter, we describe how to develop a business case for a legacy system modernization effort. We also present aspects of the business case for RSS and discuss stakeholders, requirements, and goals for a modernization effort.



Modernizing Legacy Systems
Modernizing Legacy Systems: Software Technologies, Engineering Processes, and Business Practices
ISBN: 0321118847
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 142

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