So Why Do We Need A Business Case? A few years back, when I was working for a large US multinational in the IT industry, the owner of the Product that I was project managing would create a Business Case after I had created my Project Plan (so they could ‘plug-in’ the project timescale and cost).
The culture was that you needed a Business Case to get through the funding loop, and start the project. Once that was done, the Business Case was ‘reviewed’ (but only to satisfy audit requirements). What took over and dominated the project was the Sales and Marketing Plan. This drove everything.
As long as you ‘got your numbers’ folks got their bonuses. Looking back, I agree that ‘the numbers’ should have reflected back on the Business Case – so there was a relationship – but the emphasis and culture was off-course in my opinion.
