How to Create Business Cases for Your Strategic IT Projects

All IT projects must advance business, not IT. Advancement firstly means financial success. So, if you are an Enterprise Architect or work in IT, you need to show how your solution will make or save money for the company and that it will take only a little while to do so. This is its Business Case.

It is a case for the solution as a business, not a case made to the business for the solution.

Although money rules for businesses, I add a non-financial criterion for acceptance of a solution — its environmental impact — measured as its Carbon Footprint. Even with a robust financial business case, the solution must not be implemented unless its CF is negative, zero, or low enough.

(*Public service, governmental, and charitable enterprises with a significant IT cost must insist on something similar, let's call it an Outcome Case, where the success criterion can be the social good a solution delivers, measured in some way that can be compared with the cost. It's an exciting topic beyond the scope of this article.)

In my long IT career, I've observed that only some architects assume responsibility for business cases or know how to make them. Worse, many projects are launched without anyone making a business case, resulting in rancour and disappointment from unforeseen costs, truncation, and lack of returns.

Management should only approve an IT project with a positive business case, and any IT project should be proposed to management with one.

This article examines how an EA or Senior Solution Architect can prepare a Business Case.

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