Business Cases 'R Us

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Business Case   Strategy  

Last month's column addressed some of the most common challenges that project managers encounter in developing and using business cases to justify their projects. While a business case is the most commonly used tool for project justification, it is also often the least understood. Because as project managers we are most often responsible for developing and presenting a business case (I'll leave whether or not that should be our role to another column), it is important to understand the mindset and approach that underlies creating a genuinely relevant business case.

While a business case is a relatively unique deliverable in the project lifecycle, there are a few key considerations that when taken into account make the process of developing a good business case a much more straightforward undertaking:

Decide if a business case is in fact the right decision-making tool.
While this may seem like an odd first step in writing a business case, it isn't. What is essential to keep in mind is that a business case is a decision-making tool that only looks at financial considerations. No matter what other considerations may be viewed as being relevant to a decision, if they cannot be expressed in terms of their financial impact they have no influence on the results of the business case. If projects are being undertaken for reasons that are not financial--whether that is because of …

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