News
ISACA Value Management Forum to Examine Business Cases
May 2009 by ISACA
The second Value Management Forum (VMF) meeting, hosted by the ISACA London Chapter, will be held on 2nd June and will focus on business cases. Prof. Joe Peppard from Cranfield School of Management will speak on Building Better Business Cases and Paul Williams, Past International President of ISACA and Chair of ISACA’s Strategic Advisory Group (SAG), will talk on Val IT Strategy. The group will then split into roundtable sessions to discuss issues they have encountered with business cases and how—or if—they have addressed them.
The first VMF meeting took place on 2nd April, with 24 senior executives from large enterprises gathering to examine what is meant by value in the context of IT. The key issue discussed was that IT itself enables the creation of capabilities, not value, and that it is only through the use of IT by business functions that value is created for shareholders and those whom not-for-profit organisations exist to serve. Key speakers at the inaugural meeting were Chris Tiernan of Grosvenor Consultancy Services LLP and John Thorp. Both were principle authors of The Val IT Framework 2.0, which is freely downloadable from www.isaca.org/valit.
“At the inaugural meeting of the VMF many of the issues in Value Management were felt by members to have their origins in the quality of business cases,” Tiernan said.
The most prominent issues of concern surrounding business cases were:
· What are business cases for?
· What period should they span?
· Who should be responsible for preparing and achieving business cases?
· How do we deal with risks to achieving the benefits in business cases?
· Should reviews look back or forward, or in both directions?
· When should business cases be updated?
· Can business cases be prepared only for programmes that create value, rather than for projects that might or might not create value?
· How can business cases with and without IT be compared?
· Do post-implementation reviews produce anything worthwhile?
Tiernan continued, “As someone once said, the seeds of both success and failure are sown in the business case.”
About the Value Management Forum
The Value Management Forum was set up by the ISACA London Chapter to increase awareness of and improve the practices in the area of Value Management (as described in Val IT from the IT Governance Institute) as well as to broaden and deepen engagement between IT and other business functions
About ISACA
With more than 86,000 constituents in more than 160 countries, ISACA (www.isaca.org) is a recognized worldwide leader in IT governance, control, security and assurance. Founded in 1969, ISACA sponsors international conferences, publishes the ISACA Journal, and develops international information systems auditing and control standards. It also administers the globally respected Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) designation, earned by more than 60,000 professionals since 1978; the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) designation, earned by more than 10,000 professionals since 2002; and the new Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT) designation.
ISACA publishes Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) and Val IT, and offers original research and case studies to help IT professionals deliver value-adding services.
