Project Management: Foundations to Practice · Project Initiation and the Business Case
Building a Business Case
A business case is not a one-time approval document, it is a standing reference point a project should be checked against throughout its life. This chapter covers what makes one genuinely useful rather than a formality.
A business case is the document that justifies why a project should happen, typically covering the problem or opportunity being addressed, the expected costs and benefits, the alternatives considered, and the risks of doing nothing at all, since 'do nothing' is itself always a viable alternative worth explicitly evaluating and rejecting with reasons, not simply assumed away [1].
Key Takeaways
- A business case covers the problem, expected costs and benefits, alternatives considered, and explicitly the risk of doing nothing.
- PRINCE2's continued business justification principle requires the business case to be revisited and validated at each major stage.
- A live business case gives the sponsor a standing tool to continue, adjust, or stop the project as circumstances change.
- Overstating benefits with false precision, rather than a realistic range, creates misplaced confidence that later gets exposed.