From Business Case to Boardroom – Using Benefits to Pick the Right Projects

Imagine being asked to choose dinner for a group of ten people without knowing if they’re vegans, meat lovers, or allergic to peanuts. You’re guaranteed to disappoint at least half of them. Too many organizations select projects in much the same way: a buffet of ideas, with too little connection to strategy or value.

No wonder portfolios can become bloated with “pet projects” and ideas whose benefits have not been tested against competing demands. They are soup served for the dessert course!

Why benefits matter more than deliverables

A shiny new IT system isn’t a benefit. Faster loan approvals, fewer data-entry errors, or happier customers … that’s the benefit, not the system itself.

Put another way, if you deliver the system but nobody uses it to produce the intended business benefit, delivering on time and on budget has not delivered the outcome the investment was meant to create.

The antidote? Start with benefits. Focus on benefits throughout the project.

I call this “focusing on the egg, not the duck”.

Confused? This video explains it all…

Whether you look at Steve Jenner’s Managing Benefits or frameworks like Queensland’s Business Case Development Framework, the principle is similar: understand the need, the outcomes and benefits you expect, the risks and assumptions, and the alternatives before making the investment decision.

Will it deliver a worthwhile egg?

If so, it may deserve to compete for resources. That still doesn’t mean it should automatically receive them.

The business case: portfolio bouncer

This is where the business case earns its place. It should not only show that an initiative is worthwhile in isolation. It should give leadership enough evidence to compare that investment with other credible uses of the same funding and capacity. A good decision process means:

1. Make sure you thrash out real benefits (not vague “improve efficiency” waffle). Make them specific and measurable.
2. Red flag projects where the “goal” is an output (e.g. we will deploy a new system). Make sure the business case is built around the value that system is expected to deliver, such as reducing processing time by 10%.
3. Test whether the work can actually fit within available funding and capacity. A project can have an attractive business case and still not belong in the portfolio if supporting it makes a better combination of investments impossible.
4. Assess the risk to the benefit up front. How confident are you that the expected benefit can actually be realised?

Case in point: one government department I spoke with had 120 projects in flight. They told me that only about 20% were being completed, while the rest continued competing for the same resources and their expected benefits remained unrealised.

The lesson isn’t that every organisation should fund fewer projects. It is that approving a worthwhile project is not enough if the resulting portfolio demands more capacity than the organisation can actually support.

Same resources. A different question: which combination of projects best supports your priorities while still fitting within your funding and capacity?

A good business case is not yet a portfolio decision

A business case can establish that an investment is worthwhile. It cannot, by itself, establish that this is the investment leadership should fund when several worthwhile commitments compete for the same resources.

That requires comparison across the portfolio: expected benefits, strategic contribution, confidence in the assumptions, funding, capacity, mandatory work and important dependencies. The question changes from “Is this project worth doing?” to “Given what we can actually support, what should we commit to and what gives way?” The RNLI case study shows that shift in practice: existing and new initiatives competed for scarce specialist time, several credible portfolios were compared, and the portfolio was later rebalanced when priorities changed.

And approval is not the end of the decision. Benefits assumptions can change. Evidence can weaken. A previously sensible investment can face a stronger competing claim. In our Portfolio Management: Influencing the Weather? webinar, Steve Jenner and Stuart Easton explore benefits-led portfolio management, staged funding and why existing commitments need to return for review rather than becoming permanent simply because they were approved once.

If you need the wider discipline of defining, owning, tracking and sustaining benefits after selection, see our Ultimate Guide to Benefits Management.

If you are facing a live choice between worthwhile investments, a Decision Review is a 30-minute, no-fee, confidential conversation about the choice, what is constraining it and what would have to change for the answer to be different. No preparation needed.

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