The Business Case
Darryl Godfrey
A senior project manager with 20 years plus experience in pharma, TIC, consumer products and digital media.
This article follows on more-or-less from part 2 of "IT is too cheap!" (see here).
Very often producing a business case for an IT project is seen as unnecessary overhead. Underneath this feeling is a presumption that IT is too unimportant (and maybe too cheap) to bother.
The business case in mature organisations is the critical document which answers the question: "why should we do this project?". If the business case doesn't spell-out what the organisation will gain as well as what it will spend, then it's a waste of time.
Often the presented business case is a load of waffle, designed to tick the box and move forward. And really, if no-one cares how much they spend on IT and whether they get any benefits, then there's no need to bother.
Breaking past this barrier is really tough and gives portfolio managers grey hairs. It's hard enough to get a coherent business case before initiating a project, let alone to re-visit the business case as the project progresses to ensure that the project is still on-target to deliver what's expected.
I don't have a magic answer for this problem. It's a question of the level of maturity of the organisation. It's amusing that most organisations have extremely tight controls on expenses approvals and issuing purchase order, but to project spending it's the wild west all over again.
Does your organisation insist on business cases for projects? Are they meaningful or just box-ticking exercises? Are business cases ever reviewed to see if they're still valid?