Challenges In Business Case Development And Requirements For Business Case Frameworks

Business cases (BC) are often used to support information systems (IS) investment evaluation. Unfortunately, business case development (BCD) is a complex task, especially identifying and quantifying the benefits of a proposed investment. Although today's business case frameworks (BCF) support BCD to some extent, they have several limitations. Based on a case study and interviews with BC developers, this study further investigates challenges in BCD, describes limitations of BCF and reveals opportunities for the improvement of BCF. Thus, a starting point is provided for user-centred designers and engineers who aim to develop better tool support for BCD. The results of the study show that the general focus areas should be (1) the support for reuse of BC components, (2) enabling adaptation and maintenance of BCs over longer periods of time, and (3) improving the collaboration among BC stakeholders. More specifically, the interviewees argue that more support is needed for market potential estimation, determining information quality, clarifying reasoning, and the reuse of structure.