E013 Financial Planning for IT Professionals carries the banner number ITIM 5511 and is worth 3 competency units. It builds the financial literacy a technology leader needs to determine the value and the cost of an organization's technology, including reading and interpreting budgets and the key indicators leadership actually watches. E013 and ITIM 5511 are the same requirement under two labels. The course exists because technology decisions are approved or refused in financial language, and engineers who cannot speak it lose arguments they should win.
Money is the constraint every technical argument runs into
The idea that organizes this course is that a technology proposal is a financial proposal wearing technical clothes. Every recommendation you will ever make has a price, a timing, a source of funds and a competing claim on those funds. E013 asks you to state all four. Students who find the course hard usually find it hard for one reason: they can describe what a system does and cannot say what it costs to run for three years.
Three distinctions do most of the work. Capital spending against operating spending, because they are funded differently, approved differently and land on different lines of a statement. One time cost against recurring cost, because a number that looks small annually becomes the dominant figure over a service life. And cost against value, because reducing spend is not the same as improving return, and a proposal that only cuts cost invites the question of what it cut with it.
Reading a budget is a skill the course treats as a skill, not as background. A budget is a set of commitments with a period, a variance history and an owner. Being able to say which lines are fixed, which are discretionary, which have already been committed by contract and which could actually move this year is what separates a useful analysis from a table of numbers with a total at the bottom.
Key indicators are the vocabulary of the executive conversation. Whichever set your materials use, the discipline is the same: know what the number measures, know what makes it move, and know how it can be technically true and still mislead. An indicator quoted without that understanding is the fastest way to lose credibility in front of the people who read those numbers every month.
WGU grades this course Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grades and no ordinary grade point average, and its 3 competency units sit inside a flat rate six month term where each additional closed course lowers your effective cost per course.
Turning scored aspects into a costed business case
If your section of E013 is assessed by a performance assessment, treat the aspects your evaluator scores as line items. Each one has to be answered somewhere a reader can point to, because WGU requires a score of 2 in every aspect and judges each in isolation. A flawless cost model does not carry an aspect about interpreting an indicator.
Work out the budget first, in the same way you would work out a project budget. Picture a rubric carrying seven scored aspects against a target near 2,300 words. Set aside 180 words for the organization, the decision on the table and the period you are analyzing, and 120 words for the close. That leaves 2,000 words. Two aspects that require you to build and explain a quantitative model take 400 words each, because a model needs its inputs, its assumptions and its result stated separately, which comes to 800. The remaining five aspects, covering interpretation, comparison, risk and recommendation, take 240 each for 1,200. The two figures sum to 2,000 with nothing left over.
Put every number in a table and every explanation in prose, and never make the reader reconstruct one from the other. Tables carry inputs, assumptions and totals. Paragraphs carry why the assumption is defensible and what the total means for the decision. Evaluators reading a financial aspect look for both, and a document that has only one of them scores low on the half that is missing.
Reserve budget for assumptions. Every cost figure in a student business case rests on assumptions the scenario did not supply, and stating them plainly is a strength rather than an admission. An assumption named, sourced and sensitivity tested is analysis. The same assumption buried inside a total is a number nobody can check.
Shape for a technology business case
E013 deliverables usually argue for or against spending money on technology. These proportions fit that argument.
| Section | What belongs there | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Decision and period | What is being decided, over what horizon, and who approves it. | 8 percent |
| Current state costs | What today costs, split into capital and operating, one time and recurring. | 16 percent |
| Proposed state costs | The same split for the option, with acquisition, transition and steady state separated. | 18 percent |
| Assumptions | Every figure the scenario did not give you, with its source and its effect if wrong. | 12 percent |
| Value and indicators | What the organization gains, expressed in the measures leadership already tracks. | 18 percent |
| Risk and sensitivity | Which input, if it moves, changes the answer, and by how much. | 14 percent |
| Recommendation | The call, the funding route, and the conditions attached to it. | 14 percent |
Sourcing numbers so they survive scrutiny
Financial claims fail on provenance more often than on arithmetic. Every figure in your submission belongs to one of four families, and each needs a different citation. Figures from the scenario are cited to the scenario. Market prices come from published vendor pricing or a quote, with the date, because pricing changes quarterly. Industry benchmarks come from named research or a professional body, never from an unattributed statistic. Derived figures come from your own model, and the model has to be visible enough to reproduce.
Date everything. A cloud instance price, a salary range and a support contract rate are all perishable, and an undated number invites the evaluator to ask when it was true. Two sentences naming the source and the date protect the entire calculation that follows.
Show one worked calculation in full even if you present the rest as results. A reader who can follow one calculation from inputs to output will trust the table. A reader who is handed only totals has to take your word for all of them, and graduate evaluation does not run on trust.
Use the citation style your task names, cite at the point where the figure appears rather than at the end of the section, and make sure the reference list and the in text citations match exactly. In a numbers heavy document it is easy to cite a source in a table and forget it in the list, and that mismatch is a preventable deduction.
What earns Competent, and what comes back
Competent work here can be checked. The inputs are visible, the assumptions are declared, the arithmetic is consistent between the table and the prose, and the recommendation follows from the numbers rather than sitting beside them. It also answers the value question, not only the cost question, because a proposal that is merely cheaper is not yet an argument.
Returned submissions have familiar signatures. Totals appear with no inputs behind them. Capital and operating spending are mixed into a single figure. The recommendation contradicts the analysis, usually because the writer decided first. Indicators are named and never interpreted. Or the horizon shifts mid document, so the current state is priced for one year and the proposal for three.
A fast self check before submission: pick any total in your document and try to rebuild it from the inputs you supplied. If you cannot, the evaluator cannot either, and that aspect will come back regardless of how sound the underlying thinking was.
WGU allows performance assessment work to be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so send it when every aspect has a real answer rather than waiting for a perfect one. Where a section of this course carries an objective assessment, that exam is proctored and our line does not move: preparation only, which means concept drills, worked calculations and an honest read on your preassessment result. Sitting an assessment is something we will not do, we are absent for the duration of one, and we never request or hold portal credentials.
Numbers that will not survive a question?
Send the E013 rubric and your scenario. We rebuild the case with visible inputs, declared assumptions and one calculation worked end to end.
Six mistakes that cost time in E013
- Totals without inputs. A number nobody can rebuild is not evidence. Show the components, then the total.
- Mixing capital and operating spend. They are approved through different routes. Collapsing them hides the part of the proposal that is hardest to fund.
- Ignoring recurring cost. A modest annual figure usually dominates a service life. Price the whole horizon, not the purchase.
- Undated market prices. Vendor pricing moves. An undated figure undermines every calculation built on it.
- Quoting an indicator without interpreting it. Say what it measures, what moves it, and what it would miss here.
- Deciding before analyzing. If the recommendation would be identical whatever the numbers said, the analysis is decoration.
Three questions students ask about E013
Do I need an accounting background for E013?
How precise do the cost figures have to be?
Is E013 the same course as ITIM 5511?
Where E013 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 2 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.