Project Management Essentials For Dummies, Australian and New Zealand Edition

Chapter 2

Defining the Project and Producing a Business Case

In This Chapter

Setting down what your project covers (and doesn’t cover)

Writing a Business Case — the justification for the project

Returning to the original project scope

Exploring different techniques to help your Business Case

All projects are created for a reason — you identify a need and devise a project to address that need. You then determine the success or failure of the project by how well it meets that need and whether it delivers the business benefit that justified expending all the effort on the project in the first place. This chapter helps you develop clear boundaries for the project — the scope — and then set down the justification, or Business Case, for running the project.

The scope and Business Case go hand in hand. Each affects the other, so thinking about them together is helpful. The Business Case lists the business benefits of running the project; it may be worth adjusting the scope in order to get better business benefits. Equally, it may be advantageous to chop out another part of the project because ...