Projects are an investment of (often considerable) funds, time, people and management commitment in the expectation (or hope) that the resultant outcomes, benefits and value are worthwhile. Prioritizing and approving projects is a major decision that brings together competing interests.

On the one hand you have the project’s governance and project teams proposing (selling) the project and on the other hand you have the Project Investment Committee charged with optimizing the allocation of the organization’s funds and resources. The former need to thoroughly think through the value proposition and what is required to deliver it (the business case) while the latter don’t have time to wade through a substantial business case. (And, when you think about it, the larger the investment, the larger the business case yet the same (lack of) time available to review it.)

The Value Delivery Management solution is to dis-connect the business case from the Project Investment Committee by adding a rigorous ‘validation’ step into the process conducted by an independent party (often the PMO where it has the authority). This validation step verifies for the Project Investment Committee that the business case is thorough, valid, complete, well-based and reliable so that they don’t have to read it personally.

The Project Investment Committee can then rely on this advice and only review a summary of the business case and the validation assessment to determine if the project is worthwhile and should continue.

This achieves two key value delivery outcomes — the time commitment of the Project Investment Committee is minimized while ensuring that the validity of the business case is thoroughly evaluated.

This “How to validate a project” guide takes the validating authority (and it needs to have authority to challenge the project and governance teams as required) through a step-by-step process to ensure the business case is stands up, that the assumptions are reasonable, that the calculations are correct, that the alternative designs or approaches have been appropriately assessed, that, given the constraints that exist, this is the best business case for this project.

Few PMOs or alike bodies have the expertise and background to know exactly how to validate a project’s business case. This Guide equips you to ask the right questions and understand the potential ramifications of the answers!

In addition, as a bonus, for major programs that are major bets by the organization, this Guide and its supporting documentation also give you the bases for establishing a “Program Validation Committee” to even more thoroughly evaluate major programs.

Benefits

This guide

1. provides a proven, rigorous basis for validating any project’s business case
2. provides insight into the areas that can cause value to be lost, missed or destroyed
3. enables you to validate the project’s value, achievability, workload and cost, commitments and controls
4. enables you to capture your findings in a consistent manner that generates a common portfolio scoring result to support effective prioritization and portfolio management
5. enables project and governance teams to know the type of validation questions their business case must answer to be seen as valid and worth investing in
6. enforces a high standard on all business cases
7. enables the subsequent prioritization process to be simplified for senior executive management.

Who should use

1. PMO - to enable you to conduct a standard, thorough validation of all business cases
2. Governance team - to enable you to know the questions that your business case needs to be able to answer
3. Project team - to inform you as to the questions that your business case needs to be able to answer
4. Project Investment Committee members - to inform you as to the level and type of validation business cases are subjected to prior to PIC submission.

Contents

1. Understanding the evaluation challenge
2. Understanding the project justification dimensions
3. Understanding the end-to-end project evaluation process
4. Understanding the power of the validation step
5. Understanding when to validate proposals
6. Understanding the two validation processes — project and program
7. Understanding the need for a “Program Validation Committee”
8. How to validate a project’s value proposition
9. How to validate the project’s ‘value’
10. How to validate achievability
11. How to validate the workload and risks
12. How to validate the commitments
13. How to validate the controls
14. How to report the project’s dimensions

Bonus

The Program Validation Committee Charter
Large-scale programs need additional validation by more than the PMO. The Program Validation Committee Charter spells out the necessary membership, roles and responsibilities of a specialized committee accountable for validating the integrity, value and achievability of large-scale programs before too much money is spent and before each next stage is approved.

How to submit a Project to the Project Investment Committee  (and template)
A simple guide to the information required to be submitted to the PIC by the project/governance team after the project’s business case has been validated. Summarizes the key points from the business case in a standard format the PIC can get across easily and fast while giving the governance team the ability to ‘sell’ their proposal.

Be afraid, very afraid
A value delivery management article by Jed Simms that discusses four leading indicators that should alert you that the validity of a project or program is likely to be flawed.