Need to Convince Management? How to Build a Business Case
Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," offers frank advice for your challenging problems. She consults with leaders and teams to help them learn about practical and possible options. They can then decide how to adapt their product development. Her most recent book is "Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility." See www.jrothman.com for all her books.
As an agile project manager, Anne worries about her team’s inability to release features faster. Right now, it takes them a week to prepare a release. The automated tests need three days to run because the machine is so old. Then the build system takes another two days.
Because everything takes so long, the team starts new work before it really completes the older work. Worse, the team members thought they were done with the older work. When the tests or the builds fail, team members have to switch back to what they did before.
As a result, everything takes too long and costs too much.
Anne decides she wants to convince her management that they need to invest in new machines for testing and to update the build system. She needs a business case to explain the problems, the costs, and the possible solutions.
Anne knows her boss, Marty, is a business-savvy leader. He wants more agility so the products can attract and retain more customers. So, Anne will focus her case on what Marty needs to know.
A business case describes the current situation, the various benefits of changing that situation, and then the options and their benefits.
Anne starts by describing the current situation, in terms of what matters to Marty.
Describe the Current Situation
Here’s how Anne described her team’s situation:
We all want more agility in the organization. …
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