Managing Business Case

Project management best practices recommend that, in many circumstances, a business case should be established for the project.

The key sections and components of a business case may be: executive summary, reasons, business options, expected benefits, expected dis-benefits, timescale, costs, investment appraisal and major risks. See the table next to learn how this elements could be arranged within itmSUITE®.

There can be different approaches with different levels of complexity.

Business case as a document and informationsic approach

The business case is managed as a document. As such it is stored in the Documents section of the project (see document management guide for more information). Some information (e.g. background and reasons) may also be copied and recorded in project specific fields (e.g. Objectives and Background and Reasons in General section).

Business case as a project milestone

In this scenario a project milestone is used to store the information about the business case and its approvals. A project milestone category (General/Projects/Milestones) could be created to classify business case reviews. The business case document is stored in the project milestone Documents section and its information could also be copied and recorded in project or project milestone specific fields.

The Status of the project milestone (e.g. "Executed") and its Result (e.g. "Ok") may represent the status of the business case approval.

Business case managed through a workflow

A third and more flexible (although more complex approach) is to manage the business case (and its approval) through a workflow.

Business case element	How to manage
Business case document and approval
Executive summary
Reasons
Business options
Expected benefits
Executive dis-benefits
Timescale
Costs
Investment appraisal
Major risks