
The Limits of Cost-Benefit Analysis in IT - Server Fault Blog - ajdecon
http://blog.serverfault.com/post/the-limits-of-cost-benefit-analysis-in-it/
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DrJ
I was hoping for a more numeric analysis of purchases and upgrades for
IT/SysOps. The article is talking mostly about vague non/difficult to validate
benefits that may or may not exist numerically.

Sure, "Pride", "Momentum", "Inspiration" are great benefits from making
something 'awesome' but those metrics do not quantify well in a corporate, and
even in a startup setting.

I think his second example "momentum" actually sums up the viewpoint about
hardware purchases, ' IT tells them they can’t push it to production until a
new server gets approved, ordered, setup, tested, and then deployed, they will
get discouraged. Eventually, they won’t even think about new features. ' Is
this a problem with IT's budget? or is it a problem with a dev who gets
discouraged too easily? Why not simply the feature? why not nag at the IT?

It feels like the author was flippant about this issue, and in reality doesn't
do any real cost-benefit analysis.

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mistermann
I quit my last job in very large part precisely because they didn't think of
this aspect of decision making, and the cost of me leaving was a hell of a lot
more than the hardware that would have made me happy enough to stay.

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count
I think he was right - technical people apparently have a hard time explaining
themselves.

I _think_ the point of the article is that you need to be able to include
actual benefit information, which isn't necessarily straight forward to gather
or develop, rather than just short term stuff. Benefits are not just inverted
consequences, in other words.

What it comes off as saying, is that who cares, just buy what ever you want, I
mean, a developer might get upset that it takes more time to purchase
equipment than to write some code.

I can't imagine there being anything remotely close to a catch-all rule for
this kind of thing - buying new hardware at a Fortune 50 vs. buying hardware
at Facebook/Google vs. buying hardware at small, agile, cash-rich web startup
are all going to be radically different, as they should be.

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bugsy
In real life, cost-benefit analysis typically works similar to business plans.

First you decide what you want to do.

Then you write up a case supporting that. In doing so, you make lots of wild
guesses and make sure that + ones use the high side of the guestimate range,
and - ones use the low side of the range.

Remember, there was a business case and cost benefit analysis for pets.com and
nearly every other internet failure that justified everything they did to
investors.

This is the real limit of these analyses.

