Professional Training and Certification

Estimate benefits: quantify savings, revenue uplift, risk reduction, or service improvements; link to benefits realisation plans.

Estimate full costs

: include acquisition, implementation, training, transition, and ongoing running costs; note opportunity cost where relevant.
Run financial appraisal
: calculate ROI, NPV, IRR, and payback period; document discount rate and major assumptions.
Assess risks, assumptions, and dependencies
: rate likelihood and impact, define mitigations, and identify decision-critical unknowns.
Recommend the preferred option

: fixed limits (for example, deadlines, budget caps, mandated technology).
Dependencies
: external items required for success (for example, data migration readiness, vendor delivery, approvals).
Risks
: uncertain events that could harm outcomes (for example, low user adoption, security gaps, scope creep).
Risks and mitigations (example)
Risk
Impact
Mitigation
Owner
Low user adoption
Benefits not realised, process rework
Change management plan, training, champions, KPI tracking
Executive sponsor and operations lead
Data quality issues
Errors, low trust in reporting
Data profiling, cleansing, acceptance criteria
Data owner
Supplier delivery delay
Timeline slippage, higher costs
Milestone-based contract, contingency, parallel workstreams
Project manager