Why ROI Is Broken - BusinessWeek

The real reason to actively distrust ROI projections is the other side of the equation: Most IT shops are punting when it comes to capturing the true cost of the investment. The reason is that almost half of the cost of new IT projects is labor and the only way to accurately measure labor costs is through time sheets. According to research by the Corporate Executive Board, fewer than 30% of the largest IT shops in the world have effective time-tracking capabilities.

For the remaining 70%, conventional wisdom indicates that "guesstimation" is okay—after all, labor costs are being measured in toto, so the overall portfolio cost appears right. However, this approach ignores the benefits of understanding project-level costs. Those costs inform portfolio prioritization, become the foundation for resource estimation and productivity improvements, underpin outsourcing initiatives, allow leadership to understand capacity peaks and valleys across the organization, and are the currency of the right conversation with individual business sponsors.

IT leaders looking to construct believable ROI metrics should not underestimate the value of time sheets and can follow these lessons to maximize their measurement potential:

• Make sure staff are convinced that the time sheets are not an attempt to micromanage activities. They must be motivated to hit utilization targets.
• Project managers should check in with their staff on a weekly basis to ensure that they are allocating their time to the appropriate project codes. In addition, codes must have caps on them to ensure projects are not being billed to in error.
• Loop in HR and compliance in advance in order to proactively manage staff overtime hours worked.

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Site-specific app for Rails docs

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I saw it on Oprah


So true. So true

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