Looking at information sources for potential projects
Organizational leaders initiate projects in response to one of the following four categories of factors that influence their organization:- Regulatory, legal, or social requirements
- Stakeholder requests or needs
- Implementing or changing business or technological strategies
- Creating, fixing, or improving products, processes, or services
- The organization’s (or unit’s) mission, goals, and strategies
- Desired changes to be made in the organization’s operations
- Changes occurring in the organization’s market, customers, and competition
- The organization’s key performance indicators
Proposing a project in a business case
The initial information describing a proposed project is often presented in a business case, which may contain but isn’t limited to the following:- High-level statement of the business needs
- Reason action is needed
- Statement of business problem or opportunity the proposed project will address (including the value to the organization)
- Stakeholders affected
- Scope of proposed project
- Analysis of situation
- Statement of organizational goals, strategies, and objectives
- Statement of the root causes behind the problem or factors helping to create the opportunity
- Discussion of the organization’s current performance in this area compared with the desired performance
- Identification of known risks for the project
- Identification of critical success factors for the project
- Identification of the decision criteria for choosing among the different possible options for addressing the situation
- Discussion of the recommended course of action to pursue in the project
- Defining the aspect of organizational operations you want to address and the measures you’ll use to describe performance in this area
- Determining the current values of the measures you selected in the first step (this defines the current situation)
- Defining the values of the measures you would like to have exist in the future
- Identifying the gaps that exist and need to be filled between “what is” and “what is desired in the future”
- Proposing actions that will help the organization move toward the desired future situation
The organization’s goal is to fund those projects that, when successfully completed, would provide the greatest benefits to the organization and have the greatest chances of being completed successfully. Therefore, the business case should do the following:
- Clearly describe the project’s intended outcomes
- Identify the organization’s mission, goals, and operating objectives that’ll be affected by the project’s results
- Identify other projects addressing the same or similar issues that have been completed, are underway, are being planned, or are being proposed and clearly explain why this project will provide greater benefit when completed and has a greater likelihood of being successfully completed
The business case should be prepared by a person who is external to the project, such as a senior manager of the unit on which the project will focus. The project initiator or sponsor should be at a level where he can procure funding and commit resources to the project.
When you’re thinking about submitting a possible project for consideration, be sure to check for existing organization processes or procedures to which your submission must conform. In particular, look for information about the following items:- Dates by which your submission must be received
- Topics that must be addressed and/or formats in which your submission should be prepared
- Criteria (and relative weightings) that’ll be used to evaluate your submission