Business Case Development

Definition

Business Case Development

the architecting task during which application business cases are produced

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, business case development is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Concrete
• Superclass: Task
• Subclasses: None

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of the business case development task are to:

• Develop a sound business case for each application to be produced.

Preconditions

Business case development can typically begin when the following preconditions hold:

• The business strategy phase has begun.
• The business strategy team has been adequately:
  • Staffed.
  • Trained in business case analysis.
• The business process modeling task is started.

Completion Criteria

Business case development is typically complete when the following postconditions hold:

• A sound business case for each application has been evaluated, baselined, and accepted by the customer organization.

Steps

Business case development typically the following teams performing the following steps in an interative, incremental, parallel, and time-boxed manner:

• Business Strategy Team:
  • Identify potential new applications or new versions of existing applications.
  • Estimate the potential benefits of these applications.
  • Estimate the potential costs of these applications.
  • Produce the associated business cases for these applications.

Techniques

Business case development can typically be performed using the following techniques:

• Interviews
• Financial modeling
• Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions
• Whiteboards

Work Products

Business case development typically results in the production of part or all of the following work products:

• Application Business Case

Guidelines

• This task is useful for both business [re]engineering and application development endeavors.