In the last part we looked at the basic outline of a fairly generic business case. I also stressed the importance of preparing your audience, especially for something that will be new to them – something like configuration management. I also stressed the importance of targeting your executive summary at the decision maker (the person who will make the final decision as to whether your project is done or not).
In this part I will look at the most important audience, the people on whom the decision maker relies for advice.
Make no mistake, in most organisations, the decision maker will rely on a group of trusted people to make recommendations about whether a business case should be acted upon or not. So you must answer the questions that these people are likely to ask in your summary (not the executive summary, the summary that you prepare to the business case itself).
These key stakeholders will want the same basic questions answering as the decision maker, the only difference being that they will probably need a little more detail. So, the summary at the front of the business case should be direct, concise and just a little more detailed that the executive summary.
Delivery statement
The very first thing you should present is a clear statement of what the business case will deliver.
Starting off by telling people about how you are going to deliver configuration management, blah, blah, blah, is a great way to lose your audience. Most of the people who read this summary will know precisely nothing about configuration management and those that know something about it probably know vaguely what it is from an ITIL course they once attended. This is not to denigrate these people. On the contrary, why should they know anything about CM, or be interested in it? Remember back in the first post of this series I said marketers talk about selling the sizzle, not the sausage? Well, here’s where we do that.
I am not suggesting that you start setting out your summary like some gaudy marketing flier, nor should you write it as a piece of marketing copy. What I am saying is that you must talk about the benefits that your business case will deliver.
Your summary must then state when these benefits will be delivered. Here you should aim to show some immediate benefits to be delivered close to the start of the project, then some medium-term benefits, and then the final delivered benefits. Don’t just say, “this project will be delivered in six months”. Say, “in the first month we will deliver…, in month three …” and so on.
Finally, tell them how much all this goodness is going to cost them. When you do this make sure that you also point out how much it will cost them if they don’t do this project.
