This is a follow up to a recent entry about measuring IT value. As that entry said, most IT teams don't put much effort into measuring actual value, but that's not necessarily a bad thing as some of the attempts I have seen over the years are pretty bogus in any case. Your boss, and other people in the organisation, will always have their own instinctive valu-o-meter, and no post-implementation report is ever going to swing it much.
What IT teams are great at is predicting value, and getting other people to agree with these predictions. Of course we have a technical term for these predictions - business cases. Every year we pursuade our colleagues to sign off billions of pounds worth of cases - a great and unheralded strength of the IT profession.
I've read lot's of theory over the years. My experience is that, in practice, the cases that get approved tend to be one of the following types:
Well sponsored cases. Remember the mantra "it's not an IT project it's a business project." This is of course completely true, and getting an influential person elsewhere in the organisation to drive the case because they think they will benefit from it is a good approach. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't necessarily identify the best cases, just the most popular ones. There is a difference.
Cases that prey on fear. The value proposition is usually compliance based - i.e. approve this and you won't go to prison, get fined, ruin our reputation etc
Real value adding cases. The classic 'case' - based on real observable cash flows - spend this now, and increase that income / save that cost in the future. FD's are always very suspicious of these - they manipulate numbers for a living, and know all the tricks. Grind them down and they will eventually start to feel guilty about not signing them. Don't go too far or you will seem like a stalker.
Transformational cases. Best approach here is to hook into something your colleagues read about in the paper - Web 2.0 is a current favourite - and then subtly imply in the case that anyone who doesn't approve it is a progress halting luddite dragging the organisation backwards into the stone-age.
'Trust me' cases. I put one of these through every now and again. If you have an instinctive judgement that something is right, you shouldn't let the fact you can't articulate it put you off. Creativity and experimentation have a place.