Mark was about to undertake his first Project Management Assignment. He came prepared to the meeting all decked up and prepared for questions. He was about to launch a new Program that would enable his company colleagues to access the company assests from the comfort of their homes. Unquestionably the Program was important and would bring in a lot of value.
For the first time Mark stumbled when he was asked to prove the worth of doing that Project with A Slick Business Case !!!
Quite often Project and Program Managers feel that they will walk into a company and will get a Project. Quite often they are proved wrong. Quite Often they have to write A Slick Business Case to be able to prove the worth of doing that Project. And lastly quite often this requires a deep understanding of the Enterprise Environmental Factors in the company and of the industry.
A Slick Business Case does not mean a straightforward analysis of why the Project or Program should be pursued. More often than not the Program Manager can also look at losses because of not pursuing the Program.
Consider the above example in which the company wants to pursue a Program that would not only enable its employees to work from the comfort of their homes but also access the organizational assets from their home office thus making them mobile. This model is often useful in cases of flood, strikes, any event caused by mother nature etc. The Problem is things are not easy to prove for the program manager to prove.
He cannot say, if we do this our employees would be able to work from home and be more productive as there may be no correlation between the two or any industry finding to support this claim.
Even if, you are able to say the above 9 out of 10 leaders would tell you – “We’ll cross that bridge, when we come to it”
Don’t sweat! We got your back with A Slick Business Case example
This is where The Program Manager could design the Business Case so as to make sure the Leadership team buys into the fear of losses because of not moving ahead with the Program
Continuing with the above example:
Suppose the company was closed 3 times in previous year on account of Floods, Strikes, and other out of control events
The company has a modest 2000 employees
Calculating Hours Affected ~ 3 * 8 (Working Hours) * 2000 (Number of Employees) {~ 48k non productive hours}
Average Per Hours Salary as per Statistics in U.S is $27
To give this equation a colour of cost we would multiply it with the Average Per Hours Salary in U.S
This gives you a neat $ 1,296,000.00 to work with.
Even if we assume that 10% of the population is not working those 3 days.
Calculating Hours Affected ~ 3 * 8 (Working Hours) * 1800 (Number of Employees) {~ 43k non productive hours}
This gives you a $1,166,400.00 to work with.
Let’s also assume 10% of the workforce already has a laptop and they would still be productive.
Further marking down the original calculation by 20% because of above assumptions still give us $1,036,800.00 to work with.
This is the money your leadership teams should be able to forego if they don’t have to approve the Program
Conclusion: Business Cases can be Tricky for Project & Program Managers alike. It is fruitful to look at things from an outside in perspective & create a business case with improvements expected to be achieved and repurcussions of not pursuing a Project or a Program.
Click Image to access a filled up template to give you a headstart for your desktop as a service project
