Project Life Cycle

Step 2: Prepare Business Case

The business case defines the project and communicates the desired outcome.

The business case provides essential information to managers or decision makers to improve the way they perform their functional activities. The business case analysis presents the information needed by functional managers to choose the best alternative, compares the baseline to the alternative costs, and presents the case for investment in process changes.

Always prepare the business case with direct input from the impacted functional managers. It may be helpful to include a simulation model of the old and new processes. The business case and the simulation models should incorporate an analysis of the activity and data models as they describe the "as-is" and "to-be" environments, activity costing, best practices, quick hits identified to improve processes in the short term, performance measures, alternatives, and the cost of implementing each one.

The purpose of the business case is to arrive at a decision that will lead the project team to develop an Implementation Plan--a plan that will lay out the selected alternative, sometimes including optional implementation strategies or timelines.

Originator: The client, often with professional assistance.

Deliverable: A Business Proposal document. (template)

Components:

1. Clearly define the need for improvement

   1. Review existing system

   2. Examine alternatives

      1. Make no changes

      2. Create Procedural Workaround

      3. Develop IS Project (include 1 or more alternative plans).

2. Proposal

3. Define Roles

4. High-level Budget

5. Risk Management Plan

   1. Identify and evaluate risks

   2. Prioritize risks

   3. Contingency Plan

   4. Identify Drop Dead conditions. (Conditions that will automatically terminate the project.) While these conditions can be revised throughout the later design steps, they should be well defined before Technical System Design.

Step 3: Business Requirements

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