Decision Criteria

Every project has formally or informally defined decision criteria. These are often categorized further as technical, commercial and legal decision criteria.

Technical decision criteria (TDC)

Here we talk about criteria to understand feasibility. Are the use cases covered by the potential solution? Does it comply with the existing infrastructure and, if so, how does it integrate?

How easy is it to work with, and does it fulfill the standards of the enterprise architecture?

Typically, the TDC will be validated in a proof of concept or some sort of Technical Decision Making process.

Business/commercial decision criteria (BDC)

The most common BDC is alignment to budget, but nowadays corporations are very much driven by return on investment (ROI)—sometimes in less than 12 months—to justify the investment.

Further, there are different types of budgets, like capital expense (CAPEX) or operating expense (OPEX). Some clients have huge OPEX reduction campaigns or have certain cash-flow requirements that drive the decision criteria.

Thoroughly understanding and aligning yourself to the client’s needs will show great flexibility and influence the decision toward your offering.

Questions to ask

• What are the technical criteria to make a decision?
• How do you calculate the ROI for this project to justify the investment?