Introduction
Business justification is an essential aid in the management of any project and is a tool for understanding and justifying those activities aimed at the development of the enterprise and require the investment of significant investment resources. A business justification is a conceptual document used for in-house planning and explaining the feasibility of financing a project and attracting external investment. When launching a project, the justification provides information that allows you to decide on the proposed project’s approval and financing.
In other words, it allows determining whether the expected benefits justify the required investments in the project, taking into account the risks and alternatives. During the implementation of the project, the rationale sets the general outline that allows you to keep the project on the right track. After completing the project, its justification will enable the business group and the project group to assess whether the project has achieved the expected results and contribution to achieving specific targets within the allocated budget and within the established time frame.
Business Objective
In this business justification, the practicality of investing the resources of the St. Nicks Alliance in a technological project in the field of database development will be considered. The business objective of this project is to create an effective database that would allow the St. Nicks organization to bring even more benefits to families in need. In addition, the business objective of this project includes an assessment of the current situation, an analysis of possible limitations and risks, and assumptions on budget estimates and potential schedules.
Current Situation and Problem Statement
St. Nicks Alliances is a charitable organization that assists families in need with housing, work, education, and medical care. The main goal of this organization is to supply people with as many services and opportunities as possible that are currently unavailable to them due to particular circumstances. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of people cannot afford even the most basic services and opportunities, such as clean housing and even education. Many reasons have brought entire families into such a state – crisis, unemployment, natural disasters, as well as the recent pandemic. Thousands of people need help, but specific difficulties slow down this process, among which we can highlight, for example, the lack of a single database in the current pandemic.
Critical Assumptions and Constraints
The development of solutions to this problem is negatively affected by several factors, including the search for funding, highly qualified specialists, and a relatively global and time-consuming task volume. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the development of a database will occur even faster in the context of a pandemic, as the online services market has been replenished with new capabilities and technical specialists. It is also assumed that technical specialties and directions are incredibly developed, which will allow completing the project in a reasonably short time.
Analysis of Options and Recommendations
The full scope that can be undertaken by this project to solve the problem includes the search for reliable and highly qualified specialists in the field of computer technology, as well as the development of a telephone application. It is required to create a system database/website that will allow all persons to provide their information and, thus, view what services can be offered to them.
Preliminary Project Requirements
The following are the high-level requirements that should be met as part of the successful execution of this project.
- Start-up funds by the sponsors to cover the operational expenses during the initiation process.
- The potential concessionaire’s technical and financial capability to execute and manage the works from the preliminary stage to construction until the operation and maintenance of the project.
- Cross-browser/platform support (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari – PC and Mac).
- Statistics and reporting.
- The robust development community, reputation, or vendor-supplied support (Hong and Gong).
Budget Estimate
Based on preliminary calculations, creating a database will cost approximately $15,000 (How Much Does a Database Design Service Cost?). The cost of hiring developers and designers for a website should be approximately $10,000. It will take more people to generate ideas on how best to create a website with a database, which will cost $5,000. Security tools/firewalls will be required, as well as $20,000 worth of data protection software.
Consequently, this project will cost a total of approximately $50,000 (How Much Does a Database Design Service Cost?). This cost will be maintained for the first year, after which only a system upgrade will be required, which should cost approximately $ 30,000. The benefits will amount to $80,000 per year, and the return on investment in this project will be 61 percent. It is a high indicator showing that this project is absolutely justified because it will have a high return. The payback period for this project will be three years.
Schedule Estimate
It was calculated that the development, beta testing, and various patches for the most convenient and effective general use would take about a year in total.
Potential Risks
Despite the overall positive orientation of this project, there are several severe risks that cannot be ignored. These include financial, reputational, organizational, and compliance risks that will arise throughout the entire project and its completion.
Works Cited
Kang, Hong, and Yang Gong. “Creating a database for health IT events via a hybrid deep learning model.” Journal of Biomedical Informatics 110 (2020): 103556.
“How Much Does a Database Design Service Cost?”. CostOwl. Web.