Put yourself in the position of a CIO for a moment. Often, you need to make decisions pertaining to technology: What to purchase, what to build, what to outsource, etc. In order to aid in such decisions, you measure the value of the IT in question. To do so, you would likely examine several financial elements. This could include software license costs, hardware purchases, maintenance and warranty costs, salaries, training costs and more. As you can see, IT can be extremely expensive, but does that cost alone equate to that IT's total value? Consider the following statement:
‘The best way to measure IT value is by using financial metrics'.
For this Discussion, your challenge is to debate with your colleagues whether or not this statement has merit. For this debate, your Instructor will assign you to one side of this statement, meaning you will argue to either support or refute its validity. Your job is to persuade the ‘opposite' side that your perspective is the correct one. Remember that persuasion is the art of convincing others to give favorable attention to your point of view. Thus you must not only grasp your audience's attention (e.g. a direct statement of intent, a rhetorical question or a strong quotation), but also support your arguments with techniques and tools such as expert testimonies, analogies, flow charts and so on.
To complete this Discussion:
Post: Create an initial post in which you refute the validity of the following statement:
‘The best way to measure IT value is by using financial metrics'.
Evaluate the validity of the statement based on your own analysis of relevant facts, trends and/or news pertaining to the measurement of IT value. Furthermore, begin your post with a strong statement, rhetorical question, quotation or any other similar method with which to grasp your audience's attention. Your arguments must also be adequately supported using one or more of the following methods:
· Examples: flow charts, anecdotes or definitions
· Reiteration and paraphrasing of main points
· Statistics (use sparingly)
· Comparisons/analogies
· Expert testimony