How to write a business case
Key takeawaysWhat is social media?
A business case helps decision-makers judge whether an investment is worth the time, money and risk.
- State the reason for the activity and ensure it aligns with organisational strategy.Why social media?
- Compare realistic options, including doing nothing, and clearly justify the preferred choice.
- Separate project costs and timescales from ongoing operational costs and benefit realisation timescales.Benefits of social media
- Define benefits in measurable terms and distinguish outcomes from benefits so performance can be tracked.
- Include known dis-benefits and major risks, plus mitigations, to avoid one-sided decisions.Best practices for social media
- Use an investment appraisal, such as net benefits and break-even timing, to test viability.
Introduction
This article explains how to write a business case. It includes 2 business case examples and a free business case template for you to downloadInstructor-led.Introduction to Project Management course
You’re probably reading this article because you want to know how to write a business case. Perhaps your organisation is embarking on a major project to develop a new product. Or, perhaps you’re thinking of moving house so your family can enjoy a better life. In either case, you write a business case£499 +vat to ensure the investment is worthwhile.
In this article we’ll give you 2 business case examples, provide you with a simple business case template for you to use, and explain how to write a business case.See all dates
What is a business case? you can tap into via social media is very powerful.
A business case is the justification for some activity (e.g. a project) undertaken by your organisation. It weighs up the timescales, costs and risks of doing the activity against the benefits to be gained. Think of it as weighing up the pros and cons and then taking a sensible decision.It allows for
A business case forms an essential component of the curriculum of the rich communicationbest project management courses through real-time quick sharing and .ad-hoc sharing of information
Personal business case. It provides PM’s the ability to provide real-time information to stakeholders from any location at any time.
You may also use a business case to justify an investment you make in your personal life. For example, when you’re thinking of moving home to another area. You and your spouse will need to understand the costs of moving, the timescales and risks involved, and weigh these up against the benefits to be gained e.g. saving time traveling to your office, or your children able to go to a better school.Best practices for social media
Why have a business case?Focus on
Projects should not just start on a whim or because of vanity – although a lot of money has been wasted over the years on such building relationshipsprojects. This is the best use of social media on projects. Make sure your team agrees which social networking tools are to be used. You might want to document the following:.how the team should use the tools,
For business organisations, justification for a project usually takes a commercial form i.e. evaluating how much money could be made from the investment. For example, investing money in developing a new software app to bring first to market, might be deemed to bring certain monetary benefits (in terms of sales) which exceeds the costs of investment.when the team should use the tools,
For government organisations, justification is probably not a commercial one, but could be based upon giving value for money to achieve certain benefits. For example, a public health campaign extolling the benefits of flu-vaccinations for elderly people, might be judged as giving greater value for money than having no campaign, and instead relying on treating patients in hospital once they have contracted the virus.what type of content should be contained, and not contained, in posts or updates.
With so many competing claims being made on scarce funds, organisations need the assurance that the decision they are taking is the right one. After all, there will not be enough funds to pay for all the ideas for projects which are floating around the organisation.Next you need take
Who uses a business case?privacy and security
Business cases can be used by many different levels of management within an organisation. Not only are they used to justify the investment in an individual project, but also they are typically used by a into account when adopting social media into the workplace. You need processes and guidelines in place to ensure that social media is used responsibly and that care is taken when sharing information inside and outside of your team.portfolio managementSocial media is a office to help it decide which projects will contribute to the organisation’s strategic goals. That way, they can filter out the bad ideas for projects, and only fund projects which will contribute to strategic goals.culture
A business case is also often used by a project sponsor or project executive to help it decide if they should invest in a specific project. that is created, supported and enabled by various technologies and applications that are constantly growing and changing. The true innovation is the cultural change that social media has bought about. People think, act, and communicate in a completely different way.
In all cases, the business case must be written and approved prior to any major commitment of resources.Social media as a project management tool
What form does a business case take?For many project management professionals, social media is already part of their lives whether they use it intentionally or not. In order to adopt social media on your
Business cases can take many forms – digital or analogue. The tools you use to create one are also many and varied. Common business tools such as Microsoft Office might be used. Rather than being a document or slide deck however, it could equally be in the form of an email.projects
Equally, a business case could be written by hand on a whiteboard or flipchart, or on the back of a cigarette packet!, you need to understand how to use the various tools available.
What you should always remember is that a business case does not have to be a huge long document. In fact, it should be as short as possible, and only include the most important information. That way it cuts out the noise and provides decision-makers with just the right information to enable them to take sensible decisions.Twitter
For those of you interested in Twitter is the most popular micro-blogging tool today. It allows you to send short messages to the internet but limits the update to 140 characters and also permits your “tweets” to be protected. The tweets appear on your homepage in a long chronological stream, with the most recent comments at the top.project managementThere are several ways to use Twitter to help you manage a project., the project management methodology known as Project management articlesPRINCE2– use search to find good articles about specific project management topics and best practices. focuses its decision-making on a project on having a viable business case.# Hashtags
Business case examples– are used to help index the subject matter of your tweet. For example, the hashtag #pmot is used for tweets about “project management on Twitter”. When you click on the hashtag, you will immediately see a page full of the recent tweets that have used the same tag. This is a simple way that users can quickly filter for only tweets about specific subjects. You can also search for tweets by typing the hashtag in the Twitter search box. Other useful hashtags are: #projectmanager, #pmp, #project, #msproject and #pm. Also check #PMChat for Tweetups every Friday for an innovative way to get answers to
We will now give you 2 business case examples. The first example is one which you might find useful for taking decisions in your personal life. The 2nd business case example is more business focused project.project management
Business case example 1: Moving home questions and obtain different perspectives.
Suppose you and your spouse are considering moving to a new home. You will need to weigh up the pros and cons of moving. This is done using a business case. You might not call it that, but that’s what it is. Let’s look at an example.Team hashtags
Reason– a project team can decide on its own hashtags for the
As you can see from the example, the first thing to be clear about in a business case is the reason for doing the project or activity. In this example, the couple has answered the question projectsWhy? they’re working on. If your team is working on a business application project, you could decide on a hashtag to use across Twitter, such as #busapp. This will work for projects where security is less of a concern. In fact, there are two problems here – the local school and John’s long commute.Lists
Options considered– On the Home page of Twitter, your Twitter timeline can get cluttered very quickly. Use Twitter lists to group Twitter users. Make a list of other users who are also in
A business case should weigh up the competing options which have been considered. After all, there is usually more than one option. Perhaps an alternative option would have been for John to change his job to one nearer their current house. However, this wouldn’t solve the issue with the school.Project Management
Benefits. For example, create a list for project managers and every time you follow a person on Twitter who is also a
The benefits of a project or activity are the positive things you’re going to get back in return for your investment of time and money. In this case, the kids will get a better education, and John will save time each day.project manager
Timescales, you add them to your list. Soon you connect with project managers from all over the world who you can collaborate with. Or create a list for your team relating to the project you are working on. Send them the URL of the list so they can see who you’ve added.
It’s also important to understand how long the investment of resources will take. This is so that the organisation (or family in this case) knows when the resources will be freed up to work on other YouTubeprojectsFor the project manager, YouTube offers hundreds of videos on project management methodology. More people prefer video to text with certain types of information. If you have distributed teams, set each group up with the means to create video updates. Not only will your status reports be more engaging, but putting faces to names creates a closer, more respectful team. or activities.Yammer
There are usually 2 timescales to consider. First, the timescale of the project or activity – in this case 3 months to find a new house and move there. Second, the time over which the benefits shall be realized. In this case it’s 5 years until the kids leave school.Yammer is like Facebook’s equivalent, but in the corporate world, focused on the company. With Yammer, you can share announcements, create a team calendar of milestones, create pages for different interests, and upload documents.
CostsAlso consider posting your team’s latest screenshots of the app for team members to comment on and share video updates or team photos. Yammer allows for more in-depth updates and comments can also be grouped into a “thread” beneath each post.
The costs of doing the project or activity is the next important bit of information. On this project, the costs of moving to a new house will be £5,000. These are the project costs.Enhance your skills with our expert-led courses
However, the couple will spend an additional £2,000/year for every year over which the business case is calculated. For a project in an organisation, this is usually referred to as the operational costs of maintaining and operating the projects outputs e.g. an IT system. At this point, the couple knows the total costs over the timescales when the benefits shall be realized.
Risks
For any activity or project, it’s also important to understand the major risks involved. Risks are the uncertain things which may or may not happen during the period of the investment. There is only one risk identified here, which is the risk that the couple might lose touch with friends who live close to them right now.
Investment appraisalInstructor-led
The next section is where the costs and timescales and risks are weighed up. For this project, it’s a simple decision for the couple to decide if it’s worth spending money over the next 5 years to give their kids better schooling and to save John 2 hours a day commuting.Introduction to Project Management course
For an organisation to decide if an investment is worthwhile, however, there are several different ways in which it can decide about the investment.
Often in organisations there are rules defined to help business analysts or £499 +vatproject managers write what’s called an investment appraisal. In the next example, we’ll look at one example known as net benefits.See all dates
Business case example 2: Handheld device project
Imagine a heating repair services company that uses a paper-based set of forms filled in by an engineer during site visits. The spare parts required to fix the heater are recorded on a form which is given to staff to process back in the office. They then order the parts, and schedule a follow-up visit for the engineer to fix the heater.
Let’s now look at this example business case.project managers
Executive summary.
This sample business case contains an executive summary. This section briefly describes the selected option and the key benefits it will bring.Subscribe to our exclusive offers and promotions
Reasons
The reasons for the project are clearly spelled out when describing the 3 current problems which the company faces.Subscribe now
Options
In this example, there are 2 options (other than do nothing) which have been examined. Each option is summarized and the reason why option 3 is the preferred option has been stated.
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The expected benefits of reduced overheads are clearly stated. Benefits should be measurable and quantifiable. That means that the benefits can be measured later. But what about the reduced errors, rescheduled appointments and customer contract cancellations? Aren’t they benefits?
Well, these are in fact something else – they’re called outcomes. Outcomes are the results of the changes which come about by using the new handheld devices. The ways you measure the improvements resulting from these outcomes are known as benefits.Related articles
Dis-benefits
This example also contains a dis-benefit which is that the back-office staff morale will be lower due to reduced overtime payments. A dis-benefit, if you’re wondering, is a negative consequence of a project. It’s not the same as a risk which implies something uncertain. A dis-benefit is something which you know will happen because of the project and it has negative consequences for the organisation. It’s the opposite of a benefit!
Timescales
Just as we saw in the previous example, the business case contains 2 timescales – the project timescales (i.e. the time it will take to complete the project) and the benefits realization timescales (i.e. the time over which benefits are expected to be realized).
Costs
Again, there are 2 costs – project costs and the ongoing operational costs over the benefits realization timescale. When the decision is taken whether to invest in this project, the total costs (i.e. project costs and ongoing operational costs) are weighed against the expected benefits over the same time period.
Risks
One major risk has been identified in this example, but on your project, there could be many risks.
Investment appraisal
The final section is the investment appraisal. The investment technique used in this example is called net benefits. As you can see from the table, the project and operational costs are recorded for each year of the investment.
The project lasts 1 year which is why the project costs are zero after year 1. Of course, the benefits won’t be realized until the solution is in place and the company starts to use the handheld devices.
The net benefits are simply the total benefits minus the total costs. This shows that the company will start to get a return on its investment sometime towards the end of year 2. This knowledge is vital if the decision-makers are to take a sensible decision about whether to invest in the project.
Business case template
This simple Project management interview techniques: Free ebookbusiness case template is free to download.Simon Buehring
Summary19 Feb 2026
A business case is the most important document on any project. That’s because it justifies the investment.
It helps an organisation be clear about why a project is needed, and what the results of the investment will be. This is crucial because no organisation has unlimited funds to spend on an unlimited number of projects. Therefore, a business case gives confidence to senior managers when deciding to invest in one project rather than another.Prepare for your project management interview with our free ebook full of techniques and tips. Enhance your interview skills today.
However, as you have seen in this article, a business case is something which you can find useful when taking major decisions in your own personal life. Remember – a business case doesn’t need to be a lengthy document. It could easily be a few notes scribbled on the back of something or even sent in an email.
Whatever form your business case takes, remember one thing – it will help you or your organisation take sensible decisions about committing time and resources to a project or activity.
Remember, if you want to learn more about developing a business case, and learn many of the techniques useful for assessing business problems, consider attending a classroom business analyst course .
Business case FAQs
Who approves a business case?
Usually on a project, the project sponsor (the person or people who are committing the funds) will approve a business case. Before approving it, they need to have confidence that the problems have been addressed and the right solution has been selected, that the benefits are achievable and realistic, when the investment will pay off, and how big will the return on investment be.
What makes a good business case?
As you have seen in this article, there’s several important bits of information which goes into a business case. Don’t spend unnecessary time though adding information which isn’t required. Your project sponsor will have to read your business case before they approve it, and you don’t want to make their job any harder than it already is!An introduction to PRINCE2 Agile – webinar with Andrew Kell