Today we're going to dive into the world of Better Business
Cases. That's right, I've been working
on BBCS, not the broadcast agency in the UK, but Better
Business Cases for a while now and I am at the inroads of
completing one for one of my clients.
So this week we're going to dive into 10 tips for completing the
Better Business Case process. I hope you learn something.
The Better Business Analysis Institute presence, the Better
Business Analysis podcast with Kingsman Walsh.
So if you're not familiar with it, the Better Business case
process came out of the UK government and it was used in
here in New Zealand and it's used in Australia and I'm sure
other models of it are used overseas.
It is a a quite well documented clear process for requesting
funds from a government. So it's goes through different
stages, stage gates if you like, where you ask for money and to
complete the next stage of your business case.
So you might do business cases internally and they are based on
this model. The idea is that you are making
it very clear why people should invest in this.
And because it's government focused, the government needs to
compare your business case. It's usually a chunk of change
and they need to compare that money, say for an IT investment
versus a new road. So they need to know why this
would provide value to the well-being of all the citizens.
And in my case, New Zealand, your government, they will have
other priorities and they'll have maybe other processes they
run through. But for those who are in the UK,
Australia or New Zealand, you will have this process happening
around you. You may just not see it.
And for those outside of those countries, this is a good place
to start. If you've ever done Prince to
another project management certification, I've I've done it
and it's used primarily by the UK government and again, adopted
by New Zealand and Australia and referenced overseas.
I know PMIPMP are more popular in the US, but there is going to
be no problem with you adding this to your toolkit.
So I'm going to lead you through 10 top tips that I've learned
throughout this process so you can be better with your Better
Business cases #1 and that is start with the end in mind, the
strategic fit. Always anchor your case in the
strategic objectives of your organization.
Explain why your organization exists and explain what their
objectives are, and then explain how this case, this Better
Business case, is going to strengthen and align with that.
If your case does not align with your strategic objectives, a
Better Business case is not for you and you can argue you
shouldn't really be doing it. You need to describe in the
strategic fit how the initiatives align with
government priorities, organization strategy and long
term outcomes. It's usually costed over a
period of time. So some business cases are 10
years. So it's the generally over the
the life of the asset. So if you're doing a new road,
it might be, you know, 50 infrastructure hundred hundred
years maybe. And IT projects generally about
10 years, five years to do the thing in five years of asset
depreciation until you have to do something else.
So what you need to do really is for say, an education data
platform, which I'm doing at the moment, you need to link that to
digital equality, improving the student outcomes and better
policy making. So that's a top tip, this
initiative, when you're putting this together, you need to
explain why this initiative, the one you want to do, aligns
directly with digital strategy and supports the government
vision for what, right. So that's how you state it.
And the strategic case is the first case you do.
And each one of these sections, there's quite a few, there's
strategic, there's the economic, there's the commercial, there's
the financial and there's a management case.
And then there's an ask what are you asking for?
And as you go through the various stage gates, you there
are different types and we'll talk about those.
You elaborate more on each section.
So in the first step, no matter what you do, you're doing a
strategic case and you're explaining the why and you know,
and the context around that why, which is like your strategy and
your strategic objectives. So why and why now and why this
initiative? And that's your strategic case.
Then as we move further along the process, you'll go to an
economic case and then expand that.
You'll then go on to your financial case, expand that,
then you'll look at your commercial case and you'll then
look at your management case, which includes the project plan.
So they're the kind of sections. Now there are different if you
like, journeys that a business case can go through a bit of.
Business case 1 is more of a larger higher risk project which
goes through indicative stages after the strategic case or
after getting on the say treasury or whatever your
financial institution for government is onto their books
that use your strategic case to get on there.
You can do something called an RPA, which is a risk assessment
profile to classify which path you would go through.
And if it's large, usually 50 million plus, you would go
through the process of going indicative.
Then you'd do a detailed elaborating out after you've
gone to market and then you'd do an implementation during total
cost. So that's your different
workflow within those different types of business cases.
They are, they're, if you like expansions as you move through,
you still have to have those various sections.
I talked about South and it does get confusing.
The strategic case would be like the section, the economic case,
the financial case, the commercial case and the
management case. And then if your project is less
than 50 million or low risk, then you can go through what's
called a single stage business case where after you've
justified the why the strategic case, you then just do one
business case. It has all those sections we
just talked about and you move forward and that ultimately gets
reviewed and decided all And both of those two workflows, if
you like, need to be approved by your government agency to say
that we approve and we want to, as a collective, go forward and
ask for this money. So this is the prices you would
go through if you want money included in the government's
budget, which you would probably hear about from time to time.
So I hope that gives you a bit of background we're going to
dive into #2 And that is now that you're doing this work, you
need to engage stakeholders early.
You need to make sure you're Co designing and consulting, OK.
It is an optional, it's expected you actually have to do evidence
in place, evidence of your workshops and the annex if you
like the appendix of the business case at various stages
you need to engage users, policy makers, financial, you know,
experts, procurement and other operational teams to ensure that
the case is a complete, is robust and supported.
So for example, the commercial case which is primarily around
procurement and go to market and tender that would be reviewed by
procurement financial guess what finance you need to Co design
this kind of business case at various stages and you need to
do that through requirements management, the BA part, which
is why BAS are good at doing business cases.
And then you need to Co design some of the, I guess executive
summary or the summary of your analysis options analysis, true
options analysis is required in this process.
That's number two. And #3 is making sure that when
you are in your strategic case moving into economic, which is
the second section, you are clarifying the problem before
the solution. You actually have to do
something called an investment logic map and an investment
logic map. If you haven't done that,
there's not many companies that go out and train for it.
So there's not many ILM certified people.
But it primarily goes to the process of outlining your
problems, outlining what what you plan to do about it and what
your responses and then the benefits that come from doing
what you said you were going to do to meet those problems.
OK, so it's that's a pretty common pattern that BS used and
you can get templates for doing that.
It's it's own workshops, it's it's own area.
And depending on your business case and how high risk it is,
you will need to do that. You don't need to do the NTH
degree in my case, which was smaller, but you definitely need
to have problems. What are you doing about it?
You know your objectives, if you like, and then your benefits
from those. So problem, just remember
problem investment objectives and the new benefits and your
investment objectives drop down into your service requirements
and your scope. So what are you going to do?
What are your various scope options?
We've talked about problem status before.
I'm not going to go over that again.
But what I will say is a problem stated well is so important, OK,
You need to focus on outcomes and those pain points that you
were going to solve and they need to be smart.
So you need to say that, I don't know, data is fragmented across
15 systems and we're going to causing risk and we're going to
consolidate into one system by the end of 2026.
You need to put that level of rigor around your objectives,
OK. And you talk about the current
state and the future state, which should be pretty common to
most BAS out there. Number 4 is that you need to
keep your options open, but not too many.
You need to identify a credible long list and then use factors
called the five dimensions of scope scale in terms of the
supplies you're going to use, you're going to do it in house
or not, financials, different dimensions, there's five that
are suggested. And then down your left hand
side, you have your investment objectives and you have your
critical SuccessFactors. So using those different X&Y
axis, you actually identify some valid options.
And so that produces long list options.
You're demonstrating you've explored a range of delivery
approaches including do nothing. And then you can then roll that
down to a shortlist and say we assess five options like do
nothing, upgrade, outsource, Co, design, full platform for
example. And then you can have a
preferred option. So that is your options
analysis, which forms part of your economic case, which moves
us to #5 and #5 is to use the economic case to tell the value
story. OK.
So you need to focus on benefits, not just cost.
Infrastructure projects, for example, will have high capital
investment. They won't.
Their benefits won't pay back that initial capital, but they
might have a positive surplus over years of operational
expenditure. I know why.
The way of saying that is I want a bag of money now, but instead
of that rent that you had to pay, which is, I don't know,
$1000 a week, you will only need to pay $800 a week moving
forward. So the economic case isn't about
being the cheapest, just to be really, really clear.
It's about being the most valuable for money in the long
term. So you might ask for a
$3,000,000 investment now, but it removes $10 million and costs
later, Okay. And so you need to apply A5 case
model to assess the long term benefits, which not only improve
your organization, but if you're pitching to government, you need
to say the long term benefits for your country.
So it can be compared with other projects like I mentioned at the
start of this episode, like a running project versus an
infrastructure project in two different departments.
Number six is around the financial case and it needs to
be realistic. It can't be.
It can't be made-up, it can be estimated, it can be big chunks,
but it needs to be costed properly in spreadsheets.
Yep, and that's talking about the total cost of ownership.
You need to include implementation, support
contingencies and benefits realization costs.
You might model over 10 years the cost curve.
I'm talking about increased support costs, maybe stepped
benefits from year 2 onwards. And you need to show and
incorporate things like inflation and capital growth and
depreciation in those numbers when you're doing this.
So it has to be done properly, and you will need to talk to
your financial team to make sure that some of those more
accounting measures are done right #7 is making sure that the
commercial case works for you and the market.
So you need to think through procurement, right?
And you need to think through those procurement steps early
on. So if you're in the first stage
or phase or gate, you need to think about how you go to
market. So whether or not using a panel,
open tender, RFPRFIRFQ or a direct engagement, you need to
outline your commercial approach and it must be defendable and
feasible. And if you're working in a
government department, for example, you will be following
your procurement rules of your country and they might be well
defined, AKA you have to go to market for something that's over
$1,000,000. You can't just ask your mates.
So we need to be really clear about that.
And that might be things like saying we propose a long term
delivery model with Co design with contractors followed by a
build, followed by a long term support contract.
And you might say we're going to go out to do a competitive RFP
to select a single partner and then negotiate implementation
terms. You need to be very, very clear
about that. And #8 is around governance.
So you need to clearly define and this goes into your
management case, the decision making assurance and reporting
structures, who's accountable for the benefit, who's going to
get benefits and who's going to deliver on those benefits?
Who's going to sign off? The major changes in scope?
Have you got a program board? Will they oversee the delivery?
Who's it chaired by? If this is a large budget, but
it probably should be the deputy secretary of your government
department or the in the head of in your country.
You need to about monthly reporting and independent
assurance. So you might say something like
the government's model assures cross agency oversight and
includes a benefits owner accountable for realizing the
value who is ex Johnny Smith, general manager of roading #9.
We need to embed in our plan both change and benefit
management. OK.
And they go hand in hand. You need benefits don't get
realized without a great change management plan, right?
So it doesn't matter if you do all the technical stuff well, or
you do all the steps or build, right?
If you don't have a great change management or change adoption,
it's a waste of time. And so they, they're, they're
intrinsically linked and you need to make that change
management visible and active part of your delivery plan.
So like I said, benefits don't realize themselves.
They include plans and resources and timelines and mindset
change. So you might say something like
we've developed a change road map with regional championship
and we might imbed some training as part of that.
And this is how we're going to incorporate the program change
back into a BAU business as usual operating model.
OK. And so you need to include that
and #10 you need to make sure that once you've completed those
cases, so you've got your management plan, which we just
ended with, which will have a project delivery in it.
So that's including the government structure and your
change in benefits approach. You've got your financial case
and you've got your economic case looking at your options.
If you've got the strategic case looking at the why and the
objectives and how you're going to measure this thing, you then
once you've done all those, you write an executive summary at
the front. And that number 10 point is
around telling a cohesive story across all the cases.
So you will find you're jumping in and out of these cases.
And I'm finding myself that it's really hard to keep track of 180
page document that needs to be that big with annexes, for
example, but that it makes sense all the way through and that the
story's easy to read. The exact summary allows you to
do that. So make sure your narrative is
consistent and it's compelling. Each case builds on the last.
They hang together. So you would say our preferred
option solves the strategic problem.
It offers the best value and can be delivered and fits within our
commercial model. This is how we're going to do
it. OK, so that's how you need to
construct it. ABCD equals the narrative and
you need to make sure it's cohesive and read well and put
all the major detail for the people that want that detail,
not your executive team in the annexes.
I hope you've learned something today.
That's my experience with Better Business Casing.
I haven't talked about a specific template today, but if
you're interested then ask and if you've got experience then
tag yourself into this post and tell me about it.
I'll see you next week.