Making the Business Case for IT Investments Through Facts, Faith, and Fear

Abstract

Business cases are an essential document for organizational investments in information technologies (IT). Yet, many organizations lack formal methods for writing, understanding, and acting on business cases. Similarly, IS courses have often struggled to adequately teach what students how to write business cases. The following are two actual business cases that were drawn from work with a real company. They are unaltered in any way except for disguising the name of the company. The use of two cases allows students to learn by contrasting the merits of grounding IT investments in arguments of fact, faith, or fear. A detailed teaching note is also provided. The cases have been used effectively with multiple MBA and Executive Education audiences.