Continuing our series of blogs: Seven Deadly Sins that lead to regular and highly predictable failure on a range of topics.
Today we are focusing on Business Case Management, an organisational ritual that doesn’t seem to stem the tide of failure, despite the enormous amounts of time spent preparing them.
- Failing to maintain the business case. Many failures only come to light late on in delivery because most organisations do not track ongoing viability within the project or programme, or evolving changes in the environment
- Thinking that project success is about Time/Cost/Scope. Without including benefits and value, the time/cost/scope trilogy can be misleading for programmes in particular
- Forgetting that you have to deliver the change, not just get it past the approval committee. So much effort goes into gaining approval, it can come as quite a shock when it has to move from a document into delivery.
- Starting with assumptions on what the solution should be blinds you to the best options. So many projects and programmes go wrong because the solution was decided before the business case work started. The business case then becomes the justification for a way of doing it rather than a genuine options appraisal.
- Failing to fully engage stakeholders of the full impact the business case will have upon them. Consequently, on the way through the approvals process it is ambushed or once it goes into delivery, unexpected costs begin to emerge.
- Hiding the full costs of the initiative will always lead to trouble. The costs of change are invariably underestimated in a business case in the hope that some unsuspecting party will pick up the bill.
- Failing to adequately apply risk rating to the costs or the benefits. Not risk rating both sides of the justification increases the risk of failure. Organisations are increasingly applying a risk mitigation to the costs, but few are applying a risk factor to the benefits. Either side can move up or down.