Use the BlueTool, Business Case Scorecard, to check your Business Case before management reviews it.
Want to be confident you’re prepared to answer management’s toughest questions in your Business Case review? You and your team can “pressure-test” your Business Case beforehand using the Business Case Scorecard. You can download this 4-page BlueTool at www.blueprintingcenter.com > BlueTools.
On the left side of the Scorecard you’ll see a demo project, with sample entries for each of the 12 Business Case sections (See the 1st of the 4 pages below.) On the right side of each page you’ll see 60 questions that should be answered. Here are a few tips on using this:
- Your team should meet well ahead of the management review meeting to go through this.
- Invite others who may be more objective to your team’s pressure-testing meeting.
- Classify your responses to each question as Satisfied, Concern, Problem.
- For Concerns and Problems, decide what you can do ahead of the management review.
- Be open and forthright at the management review in volunteering Concerns and Problems that persist… and how you intend to resolve them.
We’ll close with this thought: There are two reasons management decides to kill a project: a sub-par project and a sub-par process. There may be very good “project” reasons why your team should not continue this work:
- The market potential isn’t large enough vis-à-vis other projects.
- The market is over-served… lacking high Market Satisfaction Gap outcomes to pursue.
- You lack the technical competencies to satisfy key customer outcomes.
There’s no shame if your project is stopped for such reasons. In fact, it will be greatly to your team’s credit if it suggests this course of action. Killing a project for the right reasons should be cause for celebration.
But you don’t want your project stopped because your team executed a sub-par process. Examples include:
- Failing to conduct interviews at the right point in the value chain.
- Conduct insufficient quantitative Preference interviews.
- Overlooking competitive threats, including non-similar technologies.
If you diligently follow the New Product Blueprinting process, your “process” will be much better than that of most B2B new product teams. And if you pressure-test your project with the Business Case Scorecard, you should have an impressive story to tell.
For more on business cases, see e-Learning Module 30: Business Case at www.blueprintingcenter.com > e-Learning.
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