Determine And Evaluate Performance And Cost Effectiveness Of Each Candidate System

Each candidate system's performance is evaluated against the system performance requirements set prior to the feasibility study. Whatever the criteria, there has to be as close a match as practicable, although trade-offs are often necessary to select the best system. In the safe deposit case, the criteria chosen in advance were accuracy, gamut potential, response time less than five seconds, expandable main and auxiliary storage, and user­ friendly software. Often these characteristics do not lend themselves to quantitative mashies. They are usually evaluated in qualitative terms (excellent, good, etc.) based on the subjective judgment of the project team.

The cost encompasses both designing and installing the system, it includes, user training, updating the physical facilities, and documenting. System performance criteria are evaluated against the cost of each system to determine which system is likely to be the most cost effective and also meets the performance requirements, the safe deposit problem is easy. The analyst can plot performance criteria and costs {or each system to determine how each fares.

Costs are more easily determined when the benefits of the system are tangible and measurable. An additional factor to consider is the cost of the study design and development. As shown in Table 7-4, the cost estimate (if each phase of the safe deposit project was determined for the candidate system (IBM PC). In many respects, the cost of the study phase is a "sunk cost" (fixed cost). Including it in the project cost estimate is optional.