Business Cases: Official vs Personal

We all know the rules about business cases:

• A project should not be initiated unless the appropriate stakeholders accept the business case;
• The outcomes of the business case form part of the success criteria for the project, and;
• The project manager is responsible for achieving those outcomes.

The project manager periodically checks that the project is delivering a solution that satisfies the business case and, if it’s not, puts it back on course.

From time to time, the project manager also confirms that the reasons for the business case are still valid. If they aren’t, the project is cancelled so the people involved can move onto work that serves the business.

A project can have a couple of different business cases. It will always have the official business case, created by the business to fulfill their goals. It can also have a vendor’s business case – this is created in response to their customer’s business case and incorporates both the customer’s and the vendor’s reasons for being involved in the project.

But there’s another business case that usually doesn’t get the attention it deserves – your own.

Your personal business case consists of the reasons why you’re involved in the project, such as monetary reward, reputation, job security and/or the intellectual challenge. But like any other business case, if you’re not really clear about your goals up front, and don’t review your progress towards them regularly, you run the real risk of putting in a lot of time and effort to find you haven’t met them in the end.

As for any other business case, your personal business case serves two purposes:

1. It gives you the ‘it’s just not worth it –I’m outta here’ criteria, and, more importantly;
2. It drives you forward – when you’re in the heat of battle, it reminds you why you’re working so hard and putting yourself under pressure.

So know your personal business case before the project starts – be very clear about the reasons you’re involved in the project, and define your exit criteria now, before the going gets tough. Then, with regular reviews, you’ll be able to keep focused on what’s important, stay motivated through those tough times and achieve your goals.

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Project style: Yellow is the new grey

In a thought-provoking post on Ron Rosenhead’s Project Management blog recently, Ron talks about how ‘grey areas’ are areas of risk in a project.

These are areas where details are not well defined, information is incomplete or where no-one is taking responsibility, etc. Warning lights should flash where there are areas like this in a project – ambiguity makes bad things happen.

So should these be grey areas? Grey fades into the background and this is the last thing you want to happen to these risky areas – they should be called yellow areas. Being yellow, they’ll stand out and won’t drop off your radar.

So when you find a grey area, see it as yellow and you’ll deal with it before it starts causing you trouble.

Ron’s blog article is here.

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Doing a lot but not getting ahead?

Greg has a lot to do.

He begins each day with a huge task list, determined to complete as many things as he can. He gets through a lot but at the end of each day there are always a few tasks that don’t get done, usually the ones that take a little longer – so they’re moved onto the next day and become a little more urgent.

Greg is playing the volume game; he’s judging his performance by how many tasks he can do. While he feels like he’s getting a lot done, he’s constantly stressed out by the high number of urgent tasks that interrupt his day.

If Greg approached his task list in a different way, he’d find that while initially he might not get as many tasks done, he’d end up with a smaller number of urgent tasks, more time and less stress.

So how do you approach your tasks differently? Try to identify tasks that have specific benefits – these are the important ones:

•    Identify if a task is something that will save you time in the future. An example is taking the time to work out proper estimates for a project – if you estimate poorly, the impact on your time in the future will be much greater than the time you spend estimating.

•    Identify if a task will increase your understanding of a project – this will help you avoid a crisis in the future, which is always time-consuming. For example, forming a deep understanding of a new project today may result in a question which, if asked now, will allow you to decide a course of action that will avoid a problem in the future.

•    Identify if a task is directly related to generating income, either for your company or for yourself.

•    Identify if a task builds a relationship with a customer – relationships lead to business.

•    Identify if a task builds a personal relationship – personal relationships improve the quality of your life.

•    Identify if the task improves your ability to enjoy life – tasks involving health, personal financial security and stress reduction.

You’ll find the number of important tasks is quite small and on most days, you’ll have time for other tasks. And if you make sure you get the important things done, you’ll have less urgent tasks, you’ll be more in control and ultimately you’ll be more successful.

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