The Business Case Document

I’m trying to get on a roll providing our readers with some hopefully meaningful samples and templates of documents that may be needed on their projects.  These are templates that I created a few years ago – basically from information I think I probably found somewhere else…(isn’t that always the case?).

As I stated in The Project Charter Document article, if our readers have samples or templates they’d like to share, I’ll be more than happy to provide alternate versions of documents that I’m including here or examples of documents that I’m not covering…either will be much appreciated.  And I’m also very willing to send along Word doc versions of these templates to anyone who asks…just email me.

Here I am presenting a template for a Business Case Document.  If your customer is external, you may never see this or may never be involved with it.  If your customer is internal, it’s very possible that you’ll not only see it, you’ll be asked to help create it.  The key is to try to justify the existence of the project and the work to be performed.  The best way to do that is to show some cost/benefit analysis or return on investment (ROI).

This doesn’t have to be an extremely detailed document – leave that for the statement of work (SOW) and, of course, for requirements documents.  It does, however, need to speak very well to executive management and the key decision makers if there is to be any hope of kicking the project off.  Someone, somewhere, makes the final decision on whether or not to throw $$ and personnel resources at this effort and this document needs to convince them to approve that effort.

PROJECT BUSINESS CASE

[Save file name as: client name BUSINESS CASE yyyymmdd]

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Provide a brief description of the project objectives and overall performance of the work to be performed.

SOLUTION

Describe the proposed solution.

COST MODEL

ROI SUMMARY

Describe when the break-even point of the project will occur and expected annual revenue generated by the project.

PROJECT RISKS

Describe risks that may impact the cost/benefit of the project performance.

Balancing Critical Project Success Factors – Introduction

I found this excerpt to be applicable to what I’ve been writing about customer satisfaction lately from a project management perspective as well as a worthwhile read overall. This comes from Paul Tinnirello’s book entitled “New Directions in Project Management”.

In this section, Mr. Tinnirello introduces 5 prescriptions for preserving the balance between project success factors. Over the next few days we’ll look at each 5 of those prescriptions in greater detail. Read on….

A Question of Balance

As IT budgets have soared and user demands for optimal ROI have increased, managing quality, time, and cost must be accomplished with recognition of a fourth critical project factor — customer satisfaction. User complaints about a lack of responsiveness, the inability of IT professionals to engage users about their IT needs in “user-friendly” terms, a lack of reliability about time lines along with related service sins have all produced a heightened awareness of customer satisfaction and the means used to secure it in many IT organizations.

To address the greater importance of customer satisfaction, the quality, time, and cost framework introduced earlier has been expanded. Exhibit 1 displays this expanded view of IT project management.

The implication of the quality, time, and cost framework is that IT professionals must balance alignment among the task factors (i.e., quality, time, and cost) with the press of the relationship factors (i.e., customer service and customer satisfaction). If IT professionals allow the balance to tip too much in the favor of task factors, too little emphasis is given to the relationship factors. Project managers may successfully complete the tasks on their project plans but create off-target work products and frustrated customers.

On the other hand, if the balance is allowed to tip too much in favor of the relationship factor, the opportunity to deliver timely and cost effective work products is lost. Creating a service balance is the second major theme underlying changes in the IT field. When the balance is achieved and maintained, IT professionals come to be respected as business partners by users because they build useful work products for satisfied customers.

Viewing IT work through the lens of this project management framework emphasizes the importance of balancing four critical project factors: quality, time, cost, and customer satisfaction during project planning and later in the project life cycle. To achieve and maintain this balance, IT professionals must directly engage in the power and influence dynamics of implementing organizational innovation.

Productively managing these dynamics helps preserve the balance between the project factors and enhances the IT professional’s ability to manage priority pressure.

Five prescriptions for achieving this are as follows:

• Sell good ideas by emphasizing benefits that the user or customer perceives as valuable.

• Build a common vision of project outcomes and how people will work together to achieve them.

• Generate commitment to ideas or implementation plans by getting users to modify them in the direction of personal and business interests.

• Engage conflicts directly and resolve them efficiently and effectively.

• Assertively enforce standards of IT excellence.

Paul C. Tinnirello is the editor of “New Directions in Project Management” from the Best Practices Series.

CIO Budget Dilemma: How to Choose Which Projects Live and Which Projects Die

This is a great article written by Howard Anderson for InformationWeek. Howard gives some very straightforward insight into how to quickly decide what projects to hang on to when you’re faced with a critical IT budget issue. I like his style of writing and the content is great…please read on….

Project Triage: Skippy Must Die

You have a problem. Your project budget has been decimated. The suits are under serious budget pressure and are mouthing expressions like “shared pain,” which is never what you want to hear. So you’ll have to decide what lives and what dies. Further, some of your best people are on projects that will never see sunrise. Did I mention that there are some Sacred Cows out there protected by their Godfathers, but which should logically die? Can you figure out which Godfathers are on their way out?

This isn’t about technology; it’s about management. And you need help to plow through this mess to get to a point where you can do the fun part: showering money on sexy things that will wow Mahogany Row and drive business forward. But now is no the time.

Some of these projects are “strategically important” but might not survive the bloodletting – is there a way you can hide them? Some of these projects have so much management attention that you are not kill them, but they should mercifully be put out of their misery, because either they’re never going to work or the real cost is three times what anyone thought. Other projects made sense at the time but don’t now. Want to take that Big Write-Off now? Not such a good time.

Want to play company politics? Very risky. Ignore politics? More risky. This isn’t the time to bet your job. Here are Howard’s Rules:

• Find a common enemy. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe your company is at a crossroads. But use the common enemy argument to kill obvious losers. Kill any project where the ROI – and you know how to fudge those numbers – is more than two years out. Kill projects where the resultant savings/benefit cuts over multiple cost centers. Kill projects whose justification is flimsy, like they will save everyone 6.3 minutes per week.

• Move your best people into Safe Harbors, projects that can’t be killed, even if those projects aren’t quite as much fun or challenging. A great programmer is worth 10 average ones. A great project manager is the difference between on time, on budget” and Excuse City. Yes, you may lose a few people, but you’ll live to fight another day.

• Protect projects that keep the lights on and will carry you to a better day. There’s a tendency to put off upgrades until “next year” – but next year may be worse.

• Find projects to throw under the bus. You must show that you are a Team Player, so know what you want to kill and why. Smart CIOs will start to move their deadwood to those projects, so when they get killed, the people you’d like to go will go with them.

• Get the operating divisions to kick in some of their budget to the Sacred Cows. That will force them to choose.

• Keep one or two Knock Your Socks Off projects. You need to retain a little sex appeal to give hope to the superstars. Do as little as possible as loudly as possible.

• Pass out enough sugar to international so they don’t feel completely neglected.

• Combine projects where possible.

• Realize that what you’re buying is Time. You just don’t have the budget you thought you did. Some projects must be cut to zero. And they must be cut right now.

This article was written by Howard Anderson for the March 14, 2009 issue of InformationWeek.

Job: Project Management Officer, London Borough of Tower Hamlets

• Employer: London Borough of Tower Hamlets
• Posted: 18 Jun 2009
• Location: London, Tower Hamlets
• Sector: Local Authority
• Position: Project Management Officer x 2
• Salary: £34,707 – £37,476

This post is within the Development and Renewal Directorate which brings together a number of key service areas including Strategy, Regeneration and Sustainability; Major Project Development, Development Decisions and Strategic Property; and, Olympic and Paralympic Games Liaison.

The Directorate also includes a dynamic Programmes, Performance and Accountability Team which is responsible for managing a number of strategic funding and grant programmes. Together the Directorate’s services offer a seamless approach to the co-ordination of the regeneration of the Borough in line with the needs and aspirations of local communities and the government’s agenda to build sustainable communities.

We are currently seeking 2 Project Management Officers to join our Programmes, Performance and Accountability Team. You will be responsible for monitoring funded projects to ensure that outputs, outcomes, service standards and expenditure targets are being met and appropriately evidenced. This will include making scheduled visits to advise/support lead partners and delivery organisations; the receiving, checking and verifying of projects claims and reports in line with agreed procedures.

Apply here..

US$50 Million Expansion Project for Stevens Hospitals

As reported by Earth Times

FOLSOM, Calif. – (Business Wire) Meridian Systems, the Plan-Build-Operate (PBO) technology solutions leader for project-based organizations, announced today that Stevens Hospital of Edmonds, Washington, has selected ProjectTalk^® to standardize its construction management processes. ProjectTalk, Meridian’s online project management and collaboration solution based on Prolog^® software, provides robust functionality in a Software as a Service (SaaS) environment. Stevens Hospital worked directly with P7 Integration, a Meridian Systems Value Added Reseller (VAR), to implement ProjectTalk to manage the upcoming US$50 million expansion project.

Stevens Hospital typically has more than a dozen projects in process at any given time with approximately 10 percent dedicated to new construction. The current expansion project will add a new, two-story Emergency Room (ER) building with 32 ER beds, 30 acute care beds as well as underground parking, totaling 75,000 square feet.

As a public healthcare organization serving Edmonds, Washington and its surrounding communities, Stevens Hospital worked with P7 Integration’s professional services to implement ProjectTalk. The online project management solution is designed to manage complex capital projects more effectively, improve construction project accountability and provide the visibility needed for an expansion project of this size. P7 Integration sells the Prolog suite of applications and provides implementation, training and consulting services.

“The hospital’s goals for the implementation included standardizing on one centralized location for all project data, increased project team collaboration, ability to access current project data at any time and status updates for key personnel,” said Stefan Rehnfeldt, Stevens Hospital’s construction manager. “ProjectTalk is a crucial system for effectively managing vast amounts of information to keep the project on track. In addition, we are using ProjectTalk to successfully manage schedule tasks, project budgets, and document control.”

Read the full story here…