- Business Case Development. Let's start off our discussion with the definition of a business case.
- For most organizations around the world, business cases are used to substantiate doing something within the organization.
- Whenever you want to use resources, time, money, and so forth, assets of the organization to do something new,
- we need to substantiate whether that's a good idea, what exactly you want to do, and whether there are any risks
- or liability that you might expose the organization to. So it doesn't really matter whether you're changing
- something, fixing something, creating something new, we just want to know what it is that you want to do,
- and whether it's a good idea for the organization, and whether we're exposed to some type of risk.
- Secondly, let's take a look at business case language.
- Two terms I'd like to look at that both have different meanings are initiative and project.
- Initiative is the term that we use for something that you're proposing prior to that being approved.
- Once it becomes approved, we then use the term project. Projects are the most common term that are used
- around the work that we're looking at, but many people don't understand or misunderstand the difference
- between initiative and project. So for our business case, what we're proposing in the business case is
- actually an initiative. Once it becomes approved, it will become a project.
- Now why would you use a business case? The business case is the most common tool that's used in organizations
- around the world. This helps us to substantiate what we need to do, and it gives the necessary information
- to decision-makers within the organization so that they can decide whether to approve or deny our business case.
- Now a business case helps us to map out what we suggest doing going from point A to point B.
- It helps us to link high-level business strategy with proposed actions, so strategy A, strategy B, C, and D,
- and so forth. What we want to do is we want to map what you propose in those strategies up to high-level business strategy.
- We call this congruency when these things are aligned. And all decision-makers need to ensure that anything
- that we're doing in the organization, from high-level strategy right down to work in the trenches on projects,
- has to be aligned within the organization.
- Business cases also enable us to communicate the benefits to stakeholders and to ensure that they understand
- what risks we're taking potentially if we move forward with the proposed initiative.
- We also want to map out the scope that would be involved in that initiative so that they, again,
- understand the work that's necessary to complete.
- This would also help us to map out all of the inherent stakeholders in the initiative
- and to develop an effective communication plan to help manage that initiative through to its completion.
- So the question is do you think you need a business case?