Reference no: EM133765436

Leadership in IT Project Management

Business Case

Purpose
To provide students with practical experience in working in teams to develop a project business case in order to solve a unique and complex IT business problem.

Assessment Details

Background

A business case is the first deliverable in the IT project life cycle. It provides an analysis of the organisational value, feasibility, costs, benefits, and risks of several proposed alternatives or options.

A business case helps to determine whether or not a project justifies an organisations investment into a project. The business case defines the problem and its impact and performs a cost benefit analysis for the proposed solution. It also looks at possible alternative solutions. The business case should also provide a check to see that the project aligns with the organisation's strategic plan.

Requirements

In this assignment, you will be required to form teams of approximately three (3) people. One team member is to be elected the project leader for the duration of the project. Teams will prepare a project business case based on an IT project case study and should use their own initiative regarding assumptions and the scheduling all deliverables. The report should be between 15-18 A4 pages with 12-point font size, including TOC and references. Do not include any appendix.

An electronic copy of a case study will be available from your tutor or course lecturer (alternatively your team may wish to propose their own project-please get permission from your lecturer before proceeding with this).

Ideally the business case should contain details of the following:
description of project background
description of project objectives (including link to organisational mission statement)
description of the current situation (including a SWOT analysis)
outline of problem/opportunity statement
details of critical assumptions and constraints
an analysis of options and recommendations
financial analysis (npv, roi and payback figures)
preliminary project requirements (project preliminary scope and WBS level 3)
budget estimate (cost model and baseline)
schedule estimate (including summary schedule, Gantt chart and network diagram)
list of potential risks

Templates for the above documents are available on Moodle. You can use these as a basis, but you are encouraged to research new and innovative ways of presenting your business case.

A suggested layout for the report is provided. You can use it as a guideline for presenting your business report. For assistance in report writing techniques.

A suggested business process report structure is as follows (each numbered section should be identified with the student who has done the actual work except the references).
Title page
Executive summary

Table of contents

*1.0 Introduction
2.0 Business Case Report for: [insert case study name]
2.1 Project background
2.2 Mission statement and project objectives
2.3 SWOT analysis
2.4 Problem/opportunity statement
*2.5 Critical assumptions and constraints
*2.6 Analysis of options and recommendations
2.7 Financial analysis
2.8 Project scope and WBS
*2.9 Cost model and baseline
*2.10 Schedule, Gantt chart and network diagram
*2.11 List of risks
*3.0 Highlight of innovation
*4.0 Conclusions and lessons learnt
5.0 References

Tasks should be distributed evenly amongst team members according to the first 9 assessment criteria in the marking guide in page 4.

A quality team business case will demonstrate a synthesis of plan content, templates and ideas acquired from project management professionals and academic authors with details from the case study provided. Innovation marks may be awarded for evidence of additional deliverables, team participation such as meeting agenda's and minutes, leadership approach etc.

Reference lists and in-text references should be presented in APA format.

Note: Need only selected * part.