How do you use agile principles in business case development?

1 Agile principles

Agile principles are a set of values and practices designed to provide products and services that meet customer and user needs and expectations. Collaboration, communication, feedback, adaptation, and continuous improvement are all emphasized. Core agile principles include delivering value early and often, welcoming changing requirements, involving customers and users in the process, working in cross-functional and self-organizing teams, inspecting and adapting regularly, and focusing on quality and simplicity.

2 Agile business case development

Agile business case development is a way of applying agile principles to the process of creating and evaluating business cases. This involves breaking down the business case into smaller, more manageable chunks, delivering and validating them incrementally, and adjusting them based on feedback and learning. This approach can help to align your business case with customer needs and preferences, reduce the uncertainty and risk of assumptions and estimates, increase the speed and efficiency of decision making and approval, enhance collaboration and transparency among stakeholders and the project team, as well as improve the quality and relevance of your business case.

3 How to use agile principles in business case development

To effectively use agile principles in business case development, you need to adopt a different mindset and approach than the traditional methods. A good place to start is by creating a lean canvas or one-page business case that summarizes the key elements of your problem, solution, value proposition, customer segments, cost structure, revenue streams, and metrics. This will help you define the scope and vision of your project and communicate it to stakeholders. Additionally, validate your assumptions and hypotheses by conducting experiments and tests with real customers and users. This will provide feedback and data that will inform your business case and reduce the risk of failure. Furthermore, prioritize and deliver the most valuable and feasible parts of your business case in short iterations or sprints. This will demonstrate the benefits and outcomes of your project and get early buy-in from stakeholders. Finally, review and update your business case regularly based on the feedback and learning from each iteration. This will help you adapt to changing needs and expectations of customers and users, optimizing your business case accordingly.

4 Benefits of using agile principles in business case development

Implementing agile principles in business case development can bring numerous benefits to your project and organization. These include the ability to create customer-centric and user-friendly business cases that address real market problems and opportunities, as well as reducing the waste of creating lengthy and detailed business cases that may become obsolete or irrelevant. Additionally, agile principles can increase the agility and responsiveness of your project and organization to changing customer demands, foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and learning, and enhance the trust and satisfaction of stakeholders by delivering value faster and more effectively.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?