Making a good business case

ByElizabeth Harrin Last updated: Budget, Starting a project

I found this white paper about putting together a business case on IT Toolbox. It depends on how you interpret the term ‘business case’ but for me this document is more a feasibility study: what is the problem, what could we do about it and what have we decided to do. A ‘pure’ business case already knows the solution and is putting forward business and financial justification for how you are going to implement it to address the specific business problem. I would include the actual expenditure that will be incurred by the solution, resource costs, the reasons why other solutions were rejected and relevant financial measures like return on investment, internal rate of return and so on (although sometimes you’ll find a project has such a short timescale that time-based financial measures offer no insight for decision making).

There needs to be a strong justification as to why this solution has been chosen: sometimes, for example in the case of a change in the law, there is no choice but to implement the required steps to become compliant and any resource or other costs will just be written off as ‘cost of staying in business’.

My different interpretation of what ‘business case’ means might not be the same as yours or the same as the white paper’s authors, but it does highlight the reason why it is important to understand what you are producing and why. Who is the audience for this document? What will they do with it? Is it for information or approval? And how do the answers to those questions change what you are writing?

Elizabeth Harrin wearing a pink scarf

Project manager, author, mentor

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years.
Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects.