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Arranging a meeting with the project sponsor and building a strong rapport with the sponsor is the first step to establishing a successful path to the completion of the business case. By the end of your first meeting you should have established a number of goals.
These goals should lead to the completion of the business case. At this stage the goals can be set out simply on a sheet of paper with three or four dates against which measurable outputs have been defined. It is possible that at the end of this first meeting the dates and activities will not be fully agreed. When this happens a follow-up meeting should be arranged before you leave the first meeting. As a minimum it is recommended that the outcome of the first meeting is a draft of the business plan production schedule. A suitable form for capturing the schedule, with some sample text, is shown in this illustration:

At first glance the format of the plan might seem odd, but with minimum work it is simple to understand. The chart shows a funnel lying on its side. This is to indicate the lack of understanding at the beginning of the business plan production. The funnel indicates this improving over time towards clarity at the end of the business plan production. The funnel is included to remind you that you don’t have to understand everything at the first meeting.

Along the top of the chart are three time zones (more could be added but three is normally sufficient). These time zones group together the uncertainty about the project requirements. Uncertainty in these requirements means that the project cannot provide details about the implementation. This means that any business case produced at this stage will be fuzzy in its justification for the project. Therefore it is acceptable for the goals and associated measures for the tasks in zone 1 to show reasonable uncertainty in the project requirements. For example, this could mean a large number of requirements being missed from the initial project requirements list. As the work progresses, however, the clarity should improve. By the time the business plan production reaches zone 3 the clarity should have improved dramatically. The goals and associated measures for zone 3 should be clear and unambiguous. When zone 3 has been exited there should exist a clear understanding of what the project must ultimately deliver.

Once you have agreed with the project sponsor the production plan for the business case you next need to help the sponsor develop the material to allow the business case to be written. In some cases this will mean only the production of a very simple paper, perhaps 600 to 1,000 words in length. However, often it means a significant amount of work and the development of a macro plan. The development of the macro plan is a major undertaking and therefore it is dealt with separately in future articles.