Business case and project charter confusion is not uncommon. They both have integral roles in the initiation of a new idea--but they should not be used interchangeably. At the end of day, the project sponsor is accountable for success--and is responsible for ensuring recommendations are held up by a sound business case.
The aim of your business case is to gain organizational support and funding approval for an initiative by providing all necessary rationale for informed decision making. You as the sponsor must document the business case after satisfactory analysis has been conducted to understand business need, examine alternatives and conclude recommendations. Use this checklist as a reference in building a better business case.
Organizations treat business cases as sales pitches until projects are approved, then they seem to transition into items that should be rapidly forgotten. There must be a better way!
Many organizations make the business case exercise more painful than it already is. They create cumbersome procedures and templates that circumvent its principle purpose and provide no useful information. What can you do?
Project sponsors are more than just a project’s main cheerleader. They might have the largest stake in the project’s success. Let’s re-examine what project sponsors do, what their roles and responsibilities are--and how PMs can leverage them to promote project success.
While a business case is the most commonly used tool for project justification, it is also often the least understood. Here then is a blueprint for success in building a better business case.
For most IT investments, business cases are either missing or unbelievable. In the first of a series of articles, John Finneran explains what has gone wrong and outlines how to fix the business case.
Einstein thought problems were more important than solutions and he preferred blackboards to business cases. Yet many cases read like a solution looking for a problem. John Finneran argues business cases should be built around the simple, fundamental technique of stating a problem and answering a question.
Like most projects, the value of ITIL needs to be quantified and communicated clearly to the rest of your organization. The combination of information on benchmarked cost saves--paired with baselined metric data or value drivers--will present them with the information needed to tell a convincing story and sell the business case.
Adoption of LEED standards is typically framed as a means of reducing operating costs; the greater expense in designing and building sustainable facilities is offset by reduced energy consumption in future years. This becomes a theoretically easy business case that should be readily accepted: an investment in current periods providing future savings in costs. The challenge, however, is two-fold: it requires foresight and a willingness to invest in the long term, and there needs to be confidence that the promised benefits are realistic and attainable.
Building a believable business case takes time and work. Preparing a full business case for a marginal project is wasteful and annoying. In this article, John Finneran explains how to check whether a full business case is worthwhile.
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