ABSTRACT
One characteristic of excellent business cases is that the parameters and their requirements are explicitly prioritized. When stakeholder expectations are high, and the timelines are short, then the resources are usually limited, and the business case development (BCD) team needs to ensure the proposal contains the most essential functions. Establishing each core segment of functionality’s relative importance lets you sequence construction iteratively to provide the greatest value at the lowest cost. In the case of software development (and other technical applications of the business case), a common hurdle is that the developers do not always know (or care) which requirements are most important to the customers. Likewise, customers do not have the knowledge, the time, or the desire to assess the technical difficulty and resource costs associated with specific requirements. Therefore, stakeholders and business case developers are tasked with collaborating on planning, requirements’ prioritization, and resource allocation. BCD teams need to balance the project scope against the constraints of schedule, budget, staff resources, and goals. If the stakeholders don’t differentiate their requirements by importance and urgency, then the BCD team must make these trade-off decisions clear. Because stakeholders may not always agree with the BCD team’s decisions, they must indicate which requirements are critical and which can wait to the next phase. Based upon these trade-offs, the Data Gathering Plan is created that will allow
This is perhaps the most important, yet the most difficult part of a business case (and our book) to write, as it is extremely difficult to make accurate predictions. If we could make accurate predictions in everything we do, we would be eradicating world hunger, finding the cure for cancer, or becoming billionaires playing the stock market.
