TOP Ideas

The first section of a business case needs to justify why you are even considering this project/program. If you can’t justify its reason, rationale and relevance than the project should be immediately culled.

Strategic contribution

The project’s relevance needs to be established primarily in terms of its contribution to the organization’s strategy. In one client they had prioritised their projects and a call centre improvement project had been rated as number two priority. When we introduced our simple, objective strategy contribution measurement process this number two project disappeared! It had absolutely no relevance to the strategic imperatives of the organization.

However, very few organizations have a simple way of measuring each project’s strategic contribution. Usually a few vague lines claiming strategic alignment exist which are meaningless, unmeasurable and not comparable across projects — ie useless. Yet the level of strategic contribution should be the first question asked of any project.

Having a strategic contribution measurement process is a highly effective way of enabling Sponsors to self-cull their good but irrelevant ideas and initiatives early.

Costs/risks of doing nothing

Another key reason for a project can be the costs and risks of doing nothing. A high cost/risk of doing nothing is, by itself, not sufficient justification for your specific business proposal but a justification for doing something. The rest of your business case needs to establish that your proposal is the best approach to addressing these costs/risks.

Mandatory

If a project is ‘mandatory’ (by which I mean required for legal or regulatory compliance reasons) it does not get a free pass; you have to show that either the solution proposed is the least cost solution possible (why spend money when you don’t have to on some fancy solution?) or that the mandatory requirement has been translated into a value-adding opportunity which then has to justify its relative value.

Capability alignment

I also add into this section the analysis of the scale, size and complexity of the project so that you can assess the organizational capability required to deliver it. The more complex the project, the more organizational project delivery capability required. Too many organizations take on projects that they just don’t have the capability to deliver successfully. Let’s identify this early and cull it if necessary.

At the end of this first section of the business case you need to have established …

• there is a reason and need for this project
• it is relevant to and contributes sufficiently to your strategy and its imperatives
• it is doable by you as an organization (otherwise, why start?)
• the alternative costs/risks of doing nothing are too high
• and, if a mandatory project, this is a least-cost or the value opportunity solution.

For more information see “The new Project Delivery Science’s Approach to Business Cases” – out soon,