How To Write A Great Project Business Case
A great project business case creates excitement and anticipation within the business for the benefits promises. In addition to the upsides, a project business case should carefully set expectations about the effort, resources and change needed to achieve those benefits.
Set the right expectations and you avoid a whole host of problems while trying to implement the project. Be unrealistic – say by inflating the benefits and reducing the costs to make the ROI more attractive – and you destroy your credibility and probably your chances of getting the project approved and started.
How To Write A Great Project Business Case
- 8 reasons to write a business case for a project
- 4 damaging mistakes made when writing project business cases
- 8 Sections to include when writing your project business case
Per the Project Management Institute, 70% of projects fail to deliver against all the goals promised to customer and stakeholders.
Create a compelling project business case without the full potential benefits and more costs than you need, and you have the basis for a great project for you, your team and your business.
Investing time in building a great business case for your project will improve your reputation, the confidence others have in you and will save you a ton of time during the planning and implementation of your project. I personally think a good project business case is a must to consistently deliver successful projects.
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8 reasons to write a business case for a project
A well thought out business case, with good ROI and supporting research and options is a lot more persuasive and instils a lot more confidence than a quickly put together business case.
A great project business case sets up the project for success from the start rather than constantly having to fight to overcome the incorrect assumptions and expectations of stakeholders throughout implementation.
8 compelling reasons why you should write a project business case are:
- Forces you to critically evaluate the benefits, costs, challenges and risks of undertaking the project before investing more time and effort into the project.
- Creates clear goals that the project will deliver for the business
- Sets expectations about what resources will be needed and when – for successful implementation
- The project business case is a great expectation setting and management tool
- Presents the return on investment or ROI the project should deliver for the business
- The business case outlines the impact of different options to the business including doing nothing
- Protects the scope and success of the project as you undertake the implementation
- Provides strong justification to undertake the project assuming that you have a great project business case.
Before committing your reputation, time and effort and lots of business resources to doing a project, you would want to make sure you are confident the project can be delivered, and it will clearly benefit the company. This is must easier, quicker and safer to do on paper before you have started the project.
4 damaging mistakes made when writing Business Cases for projects
Building and maintaining confidence in your expertise and ability to scope, plan and deliver a successful project with your boss and leadership team is crucial to getting the go ahead to start the project.
Writing a great project business case is the first hurdle, and getting sign off to start is a lot more than just about having a good return on investment.
The most damaging mistakes I see when writing business cases for projects are:
- Unrealistic benefits. It is better to be cautious and then over deliver on benefits. Gaining all the advertised benefits is usually hard in practice. Plus managers signing off projects can usually spot overstated benefits and when they do your credibility is seriously damaged.
- Understated costs. Low indirect costs and understated time required to implement are the most common mistakes that damage the business case.
- Poor assessment of the challenges and risks of doing the project. Implementing change in any business is not easy. Think through all the main risks and challenges and realistically include them in your business case.
- Underestimating the human factor. Some people like change. Most don’t. Good communication, persuasion, training, and time are needed to gain the full benefits. Make sure you address each of these areas realistically in your business case.
If you are unable to research, be realistic, and exercise good judgement in the first stage of a project, why will you be better through the rest of the project.
Avoid all these mistakes by researching carefully, asking those who will sign off the project to input while drafting the business case for the project and thinking through the different scenarios and problems that might arise in each.
8 Sections to include when writing your project business case
There are lots of different ways of presenting your project business case, depending on the type of project you want to undertake. I would suggest that you include each of these sections:
1 – Summary
Which should include all the key information about the project – the goals, the benefits for the business, the ROI, the timeline, key project risks and mitigations and the key resources needed.
2 – Goals
Detail the Goals of the project and the timelines needed to achieve those goals with the resources specified. These goals must align with the wider business strategy and goals. The shorter the timelines and the less resources available, the hard it is to achieve your project goals. Make sure the balance is realistic. Find out what resources are realistically available before setting your goals. Put in the time to research and speak to others in the business. It is a lot easier to set good clear goals rather than persuade the business to change the goals, part the way through a project.
3 – Benefits
List the benefits created by implementing the project. Start with who is going to be impacted by the project and work out how they are going to benefit or not, from the project implementation. In parallel, think carefully about how the business will benefit. Include all the tangible benefits – the ones you can measure and quantify such as future time and costs saved. The intangible benefits also need to be included. These are harder to quantify – examples include customer satisfaction, staff motivation etc
4 – Context
Always include the context of the project business case. Explain why the business needs the change proposed, why the benefits will be gained, or certain risks avoided. Be realistic with this section and be prepared to answer questions about alternative courses of action.
5 – Options
Include the options you have considered and discarded, explaining why for each. Including these in your business case demonstrates the depth of your planning, plus it reduces the questions and challenge you get from those signing off the project business case.
6 – Resources
Include at the very least the high level resources you will need to undertake the project and how long you will need these for. The key ones for most projects are budget, people, skills and suppliers.
7 – Budget
Create a project budget, which lists out all the costs needed to reach the project goals, including seconded internal staff or their backfills, software, licenses etc and any third party implementation staff. Carefully construct the financial benefits of the project, when these will be achieved and how these compare to the costs. Return on investment or ROI must be positive, ideally by at least 2-3 times. Be realistic on your ROIs and expect a lot of questions and challenges in this area.
8 – Risks
List out all the key project risks the business is likely to face by undertaking and not undertaking the project. Start thinking about how you can mitigate, reduce or avoid these risks.
Creating a great project business case does require work, effort, research, conversations with stakeholders and influencing managers and the leadership team. Going through this process with give yourself, your team and wider stakeholders a lot of confidence in the business case and achieving the benefits promised and a lot of confidence in you.
You will have set clear and realistic expectations which you should be able to meet when implementing the project. It is always a lot easier to get resources allocated to a project that is beating goals compared to one that is behind, further increasing the chances of successfully delivering your project.
When you have a good business case for a project, you are halfway to planning your project which saves you a lot of time at this stage, plus you will save a lot of time managing expectations, protecting resources, and managing requests to change the project scope later on.
In summary
Creating a great business case for your project is a valuable investment of your time, which will save you a huge amount of time later on, protect your reputation and make implementing the project a lot easier. The bigger the investment by the company in a given project, the stronger and more robust the project business case will need to be before getting signoff. For simple projects, a business case over a couple of pages is enough.
Use project business cases to set expectations and get buy in from stakeholders to support the project. Don’t just use a project business case to justify the project and then forget about it after starting the project.
If you have any questions on “How To Write A Great Project Business Case”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
[For more on writing business cases for projects click here]
Creating a good project business case is a really important starting point to a successful project. Creating a good project proposal give you a great opportunity to check your gut feel and quantify the opportunity. I am a lot more confident selling projects to managers within a business when I have done my homework and know the project will be good for the business.
A good project business case provides a great platform to manage expectations and protect the future project from all the inevitable requests to make changes, extend the scope and change direction.
Always write a great project business plan as a first step.