Chapter 11
Producing and Updating the Business Case
In This Chapter
Justifying the project with the Business Case
Driving PRINCE2 with the Business Case
Identifying benefits and planning benefits reviews
Making sure that the Business Case stays up to date
Projects aren’t about fun and the good of your health. They’re usually about delivering business benefit. Projects can be fun and even healthy, but those aren’t the drivers.
The Business Case is the main driver of PRINCE2 projects and just about everything else fits round it. The project has to be worth doing. The effort and cost you employ to do the project must result in something worthwhile. The media reports failed government projects (private companies often don’t get found out) with headlines such as ‘Government department spends £6 million in order to save £3 million’. In financial terms at least, clearly the project wasn’t worth it; its Business Case wasn’t valid.
The way that the PRINCE2 method builds in the creation and then update of the Business Case is neat and logical. If this isn’t quite the same as the way your organisation deals with the Business Case then you have two options. Either change the way you use PRINCE2 so that the method does fit, or change the way your organisation works to reflect the underpinning logic of the PRINCE2 approach.
For most people, the Business Case that the method sets down is already a straightforward and sensible way to show that you can justify the project and, at the end, that ...
