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In order to make well founded decisions about products and services, we need to have a good understanding of what a product or service costs MIT (roll out, support, maintain). The total cost to MIT for each product and service should include the costs associated with each IS&T group that assist in the roll out or support. CSS must work to determine how much our unit costs are (i.e. how much does it cost MIT to have a person in the Help Desk on a specific task for a secific specific amount of time). Once we know those unit costs, we can easily apply them to specific products or services. We can also then easily look to see how certain process improvements can change unit costs (hopefully for the better). Discussions about revenue models and chargebacks are also much more relevant and informed when using real unit costs.
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