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IT Financial Management

This perspective states Alescent's posture toward IT Financial Management as a common external practice discipline.

Domain Classification

IT Financial Management is primarily a Practices-domain construct when it refers to repeatable methods for planning, budgeting, accounting, forecasting, charging, allocating, governing, and reporting technology-related financial activity.

It may also touch Platforms, Products, Partners, and Projects depending on whether the subject is the technology estate, technology products, vendors, or investment execution.

Alescent Position

Alescent recognizes IT Financial Management as a necessary discipline for managing the financial realities of technology.

Alescent's position is a "yes, and" position:

  • yes, IT Financial Management provides necessary financial discipline, transparency, planning, control, and accountability;
  • and, Value Realization requires IT financial activity to be interpreted as investment, contribution, economic tradeoff, and realized value rather than only spend, budget, variance, or charge.

Relationship to IT Investment Management

Alescent's related practice area is IT Investment Management.

IT Investment Management extends IT Financial Management by asking whether technology-related financial commitments produce, protect, accelerate, amplify, assure, or realize value.

Value Realization Extension

A Value Realization-based extension of IT Financial Management emphasizes:

  • Investment over spend;
  • economic outcome over budget compliance alone;
  • realized value over approved business case;
  • valuation approach over informal justification;
  • Value Statements and Value Realization Statements over generic status reporting;
  • Effects and Contributors over broad benefit labels;
  • evidence, baseline, counterfactual, exclusions, and validation over assertion.

Preferred Use

Use IT Financial Management when derived content needs to acknowledge conventional financial stewardship of technology.

Use IT Investment Management when the Alescent posture requires financial discipline to connect to value logic, investment decisions, value evidence, and realized economic outcomes.

Prohibited Use

Do not use IT Financial Management as a substitute for Value Realization Management.

Do not treat lower spend as automatically better value.

Do not treat budget adherence as evidence of realized value.

Do not allow accounting, chargeback, or financial reporting constructs to obscure the underlying value logic.