The Business Case Checklist
Everything You Need to Review a Business Case, Avoid Failed Projects, and Turn Technology into ROI
The Business Case Checklist, is the first professional IT due diligence checklist for executives.
It can save your project investment, time, and money.
What Amazon readers say:
"I've found this book to be extremely useful."
"This book is a brilliant application of checklists to the business case."
"I don't see anything in this book that is unnecessary; everything works toward establishing a high-quality baseline for evaluating the worth of IT investments."
"There are some pithy, memorable expressions throughout this very well-written book."
"Forces me to think about what is really important when making large IT investments."
"Makes your business case structured and compelling, but needs more on ownership and managing stakeholders."
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The Business Case Checklist stops crashed project investments in three ways:
- The 12 questions to ask of any business case. Inadequate or missing answers mean you should avoid the investment.
- An investment score to guide your decision.
- A business case grade to improve your investment process.
In addition, the checklist has 73 best practices for implementation. Tips to avoid bad projects include:
- Consider any forecasts of ROI exceeding 40% as a speculative investment. See best practice 12.
- Exercise diligence about who you are buying from. See best practice 18.
- Be manic depressive about cost estimates. Use expected case, bad case, and worse-case cost paths. See best practice 33.
- Consider every dimension of feasbility: economic, technical, operational, and financial. See best practice 47.
Boosting the business case: How to make good IT investments
The Business Case Checklist not only screens out bad investments. It also helps make better decisions. Here's why:
- A professional checklist built on evidence of what works in practice. The evidence comes from two sources. First, a quarter-of-a-century of experience consulting on IT business cases, solution selling, and value pricing. second, research. This checklist distils reearch from 51 books and other publications about business cases, due diligence and related areas.
- An active, private-equity approach to investing. As a business case reviewer, view yourself as a manager-investor.
- Take a hard-headed, skeptical attitude -- similar to a private equity investor performing due diligence. Look for holes in the business case. Common culprits include:
- Sunny optimism on benefits and costs
- Misstatements or omissions
- Plain bullshit (not caring whether something is true or not)
- Take a hard-headed, skeptical attitude -- similar to a private equity investor performing due diligence. Look for holes in the business case. Common culprits include:
- Once invested, manage IT investments actively. This means vigorous execution of the business case.
This checklist includes best practices for better IT investing. Examples include:
- Use a root cause analysis to address the real problem. See best practice 4.
- Analyze whether the technology is differentiating. See best practice 17.
- Use the business case to execute. See best practice 54.
- Seek assurance that the financial model is accurate. See best practice 70.
Investing leanly: How to streamline IT investment decisions
Checklists are lean: essential information only, no fluff, no fat. The Business Case Checklist distils the critical requirements for reviewing a business case and deciding on an investment into 47 pages. Other books and reports take much longer to say a lot less.
The Business Case Checklist will help you make faster, leaner decisions if you are a:
- Business unit executive funding technology projects.
- Financial executive reviewing the accuracy of a business case and its financial model.
- Technology executive looking to sponsor successful business cases and technology projects.
- Technology marketer or salesperson needing to sell using a believable, compelling business case.
- Project manager justifying your technology project.
This checklist includes best practices to make quicker decisions. Examples include:
- Identify the load-bearing assumptions. See best practice 40.
- Avoid distractions like Monte Carlo simulation. They are irrelevant for IT projects. See best practice 41.
- Ask each business case writer to include the shortest, sharpest summary possible, ideally, tow pages and no more than three. See best practice 61.
Implementing easily: How to get this checklist working for you quickly
Easy to implement and requiring minimal resources, The Business Case Checklist, applies to all technology investment decisions -- hardware, software, and services. It fits neatly into any IT investment process. Take a look at the table of contents, or search inside, to see the simple practicality of this checklist.
Table of Contents
- Bad Business Cases Can Waste Billions
- Why Use The Business Case Checklist?
- Buy the Business Case before Buying Technology
- What's Behind the Checklist?
- The 5 Fundamental Principles of IT Investing
- An Introduction to the Checklist
- The Checklist
- The IT Due Diligence Checklist Questions
- Business Case Grade
- Investment Score
- Investment Decision
- The 73 Best Practices for Implementing the Checklist
- Selected Bibliography
This checklist offers best practices making it easy to implement. Examples include:
- Take small steps to reduce risks. See best practice 39.
- Prepare a solid, simple project plan. A 1,000 step, multi-colored Gantt chart is not the best start. See best practice 58.
- Ensure your technology vendor sees the business case as a commitment, not a sell-and-forget ROI calculator. See best practice 71.
Fair price and instant advice when you need it
The Business Case Checklist is boiled-down, practical information. No wordiness or personal anecdotes. Compared to wide-angle books and reports from the technology analyst firms, it's a bargain. This checklist prices out at less than half-an-hour of professional consulting and will save you at least a 100 hours of work. And because it applies to all major technology projects, you won't need to buy a new one for each IT investment decision.
Buy The Business Case Checklist now on Amazon
Prefer a digital edition?
If you need to get working straight away, we also offer a digital version for immediate download. Payment and delivery are handled using the secure state-of-the-art e-commerce services of Fastspring.
Do you need advice?
We offer an advice edition of the checklist with 30 days of unlimited e-mail support for $497. Simply send your questions to the dedicated e-mail address provided on purchase. You will receive a complete, concise, and actionable answer within 24 hours, and usually much sooner.
Download the advice edition of the checklist with unlimited e-mail support for 30 days (from FastSpring) 
Many thanks.
Sincerely,
Business Case Pro
Need more information? Read excerpts from The Business Case Checklist
Why use the business case checklist?
Buy The Business Case Checklist now on Amazon
Digital edition: ISBN 978-0-9823761-8-8. 48 pages.
Physical edition: ISBN 978-0-9823761-9-5. 48 pages
