Whenever you are working on the Project, you must need to know the purpose of the Project and reason the Project has been selected. As a Project Manager or Stakeholder this is important to you to know.
Keep that in mind that the Projects WILL NOT START without any proper business NEED. There must be a reason behind to initiate or to start the Project.
Business Case
Business need is one of the reason to initiate the Project. Business need should be clearly documented in the Business Case document. For example, construct a bridge over a river to connect two distinct cities to reduce the travel time from 4 hrs by road to 30 mins.
Who will raise the Business Case?
The business will create the Business Case; it may be an External Organization or an Internal Organization or a Government etc, whoever sponsor to support the Project.
Once the Business Case is properly documented next phases in Project Management will start to proceed with the Project. This will influence how the Project is planned, the scope of the Project etc,.
Projects are not started without reviewing and formally approved by the management in your Organization. All the necessary documentation should be in-place for the review and the Approvals.
As I mentioned before, Business Case is one of the reason to trigger the Project. This doesn’t mean that, you CAN PROCEED to start work on the Project. There MUST BE Proper legal Agreement between the two parties to proceed with the Project. I will explain them in a separate Article.
What exactly the Business Case contains?
As I mentioned above, the Business Case contains the NEED to start the Project. It captures the Description of the Project. We do the Project to meet specific goal(s); the objective of the Project. It captures that information too.
When a proposal comes to start the Project; the senior executives takes the decision to select the Project to proceed. NOT all Projects are going to be selected. For example, if an IT company CANNOT select the Project related to Real Estate. The company selects the Projects to execute, to meet the strategic goal(s) and the Project selection is based on certain criteria. That information also will be captured in the Business Case. That means, why the Project is selected is captured in the Business Case.
Another important thing to be captured in the Business Case is the values it brings to the Organization to continue with the Project. The values may be monitory values or the values which improves the business of the Organization (like increase the good will of the Company).
We will discuss more topics in my Upcoming Articles.
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