What If I Don’t Agree with the Project Business Case?

What should you do if you don’t agree with the project business case? The answer depends on what about it makes you uncomfortable.

The project business case is the foundation for the project. Get it wrong and the likelihood of a successful project is low.  Here are four issues you might have about the business case and what you can do in each situation.

• If you believe the business case data lacks integrity: Immediately discuss your concern with your sponsor. Compare your experiences with what’s in the business case and work through the differences. Be upfront about how your experiences differ from what’s in the case and the concerns you have because of your intuition. The business case sets expectations, so you’ll eventually compare project outcomes against the business case. Don’t wait until the end of the project to challenge the business case. Act now!
• If you’re concerned the business case is too risky: Identify your sponsor’s risk profile. Your role is to ensure your sponsor and key stakeholders understand the project risks. Your role is NOT to ensure risk goes away. When you’re concerned with business case risk, point out the risks to stakeholders and develop response plans. Focus on the costs of executing those response plans. When you understand the level of comfort your sponsor has with risks and potential costs, you can support the business case accordingly.
• If the business case was not built collaboratively: Review the business case with key stakeholders. They usually focus on their own interests and perceptions of risk and may be uncomfortable with the business case or its approaches. Hold discussions to analyze and align the business case with key stakeholders. Moving forward with a business case that hasn’t been reviewed and agreed upon makes it difficult to get staffing and decision-making support.
• If the business case doesn’t address a specific problem or business opportunity (the WHY of the project is unclear): Ask your sponsor and key stakeholders questions to try to discover any alignment around the purpose of the project. In the interest of scope and clarifying the WHY for the project, recommend edits to the business case. If those recommendations are approved, transfer those clarifications into the Project Charter. If you can’t find alignment on a purpose, recommend against launching the project. If the sponsor decides to go forward with the project, add a risk related to identifying the purpose of the project. Ensure you include risk review points where scope expectation differences could cause trouble.

Have you found other issues with project business cases? What were they and how did you deal with them? Share with us in the comments section.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 32,000 subscribers. If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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