In order to get stakeholders or management to approve your project, you will need to build a business case to demonstrate why the project is needed and what the benefits of the project will be when it is finished. The reasons and benefits of your project may seem perfectly obvious to you and others who are intimately involved with it, but to stakeholders and other decision makers it may not be so obvious. Oftentimes, they are dealing with a myriad of different business units and objectives and tasks that need to be done. A well prepared business case can help your project standout in the crowded field of everything that is happening in the company and might just be the key to getting approval and finances for your project. Here are the basic steps for creating the business case.

I'm reading an article about Steve Ballmer's efforts in his waning days as Microsoft's CEO and I ran across this in a CNN article...

Ballmer has made a lot of changes at Microsoft over the last year, including a giant reorg. "... we are well underway in implementing the new organization structure announced in July," Ballmer said in the letter to shareholders. "The teams are working together in new and exciting ways. The key change we made is deceptively simple but profoundly powerful: Instead of organizing our teams around individual products, we've organized by function, including, for example, engineering, sales, marketing and finance. It ensures we have one strategy and work as one team with one set of shared goals."

To this I say "b***s**t".  It's a nice idea to say that you've moved away from product-centric teams to functionality-centric groups.  But it's BS.  It's just another way of doing things.  Yes, you may enable yourself to focus more on the common goals of the organization.  But because you no longer have experienced product-focus individuals bring their honed skills to the table for that product, you're now risking the product quality itself.  And unless that was sorely lacking before, this just means you're going to start producing more lemons in the near future.  It's a bad move in my opinion.  Thoughts?

Is your business struggling? Are you losing customers or money and don't know how to plug the hole? Here are three things to look at when your business is failing.

We like to talk about successes and how to succeed in business, but the truth is many (most?) new small businesses fail. So, understanding how to recognize when things start to go south is obviously important. It’s not the end of the world though… at least not yet. There are always some steps you can take to try to “right the ship,” so to speak.

For the full article, go here....

Ideally your project moves out of Sales and into the actual engagement stage with expectations properly set and a solid timeline and budget in place.  Ideally…  But we all know that there bumps in the road and incorrectly documented or relayed expectations, requirements, etc. 

Customer requirements and expectations may not be on par with the actual derived budget and that potentially major issue may rear it’s ugly head early on or it could even come up very late in the project causing major issues, work stoppages or project cancellation.  It’s our job to avoid those events at all costs, but sometimes they do happen – and we have to react.

Delivery Team Funding Issues

There are several issues that can cause delivery team funding to hit the wall.  Here are some examples:

• Development bug that takes longer than anticipated to complete
• Need to put more resources on a project to complete critical tasks
• Need to put higher priced resources on a project to work through issues
• Data handling and/or loading taking longer than planned
• Underestimated or misunderstood customer requirements

The key difference between delivery team funding issues and customer team funding issues is that they really have to just be worked through.  What delivery organization – in their right mind – is going to just throw up their hands in the middle of an implementation and say, “we’re done…we’re not going to throw any more money at it?”  I realize it’s happened…I’ve even experienced it myself, but it’s much rarer than the customer giving up and not deciding to spend any more on a project.

In reality, the delivery organization is more likely to eat the budget overrun in hopes of completing a successful implementation and retaining an important customer.  Ultimately the amount of the budget overrun will play a role in the decision, but if the budget is being tracked along the way as it should be, then the delivery team has likely been strategizing for some time to lessen the overall financial drain while still working to keep the project going and the customer at least somewhat satisfied.

Customer Team Funding Issues

The more critical issue is when the funding problem is on the customer side.  This can present itself in two forms:

• Project budget overruns have taken their toll on the customer funding and the delivery organization is not willing to eat more overage – meaning it’s now the customer’s problem
• Internal issues at the customer organization are affecting their ability to fund remaining portions of the project as originally planned

When the issue is customer funding, and if it’s big enough, the project is likely to be cancelled.  However, if it’s only a few thousand dollars, then it may survive.  Negotiations will start between the delivery organization and the customer organization and a deal may be worked out to spread the financial responsibility across both or the delivery organization may take the full load in order to keep the project going.  But if the budget issue is large enough, then there is likely no other course the customer will take than to cancel the project.

Project Restart?

The outside possibility may remain that the customer will restart the project when funding increases or returns.  If that is an option – and it very well may be (at least the delivery organization is likely to retain that hope for quite awhile), then the deliver organization is faced with a new dilemma…how to keep the project team relatively intact if the project may resume soon.

If there is a possibility that the project will resume, then discussions must happen quickly with the customer to determine what timeframe within which that might occur.  If a restart is a possibility, then it may be possible to make strategic assignments to other projects for the key project personnel can be made in order to keep them somewhat available if the project resumes.

Summary

Budget issues may be the single biggest problem that can occur on a project.  If you’re out of money, you’re out of money.  Throwing more resources at it won’t help – it will only make this particular problem even bigger.  And either way, the project is still dead, and one or both organizations are embarrassed, experienced major failure and may have personnel issues to now deal with.

The best that can happen is to learn key lessons from whatever issues caused the budget issues.  If it’s a poorly run project, then retraining or termination of certain personnel may be necessary.  If it’s poor planning or a sales issue, then measures need to be taken to not repeat the same issues again.  If it’s a delivery organization budget issue, it’s critical that the causes are reviewed, documented and understood so that history does not repeat itself.

This article was originally authored by me for the PM Tips site.  It was originally posted here and appears now on my site with permission.

Social media is out there and it isn’t going away.  It’s not just Facebook either.  I’m not going to even mention Myspace….sorry Justin Timberlake…it’s not relevant anymore and never will be again.  What about Twitter?  What about LinkedIn? 

Facebook

Facebook is for friends and family.  It can be about business – but not so much in corporate environments…except possibly for closed groups allowing collaboration among team members.  And yes, it’s for Red Lobster reaching out to you with couplons for your next meal.  But is really a business tool?  As a collaboration/discussion tool, it can bel.  In those instances I see it as highly useful and I’ve used it successfully on a few projects and consulting engagements with team members.

Twitter

Is Twitter a proper social media tool for businesses?  Definitely.  It’s quick, efficient, and can definitely be far reaching.  Great promotional capability.  It works like people think these days…quick snippets of information – or misinformation – but quick.  Becasuse we want it real-time and we don’t want to much of it.  Say…140 characters…and then our attention span is gone…we’ve moved on to something else.  It has a more uninhibitated,anonymous, and sassy aspect to it than Facebook can ever have.  Meaning it’s more of a cross-over.  Think country meets rock.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn for business.  Absolutely.  Though more for networking, sharing ideas, looking for work or gigs or whatever.  And promoting your own skills.  “Has anyone else managed to get ‘x’ to work with ‘y’?”  Post something like that in the right group on LinkedIn and you’ll get lots of responses and generate some great discussions.

Now, does your small to medium sized business need a social media presence?  Should you be promoting yourself through social media?  Do you need any of these tools?  Yes, you actually do - and all of them.  If you’re not in the game now, you’re already behind.  And if you’re lingering around with 40 Twitter followers and posting tidbits here and there you are wasting your time.

The numbers

A recent survey reported in InformationWeek had some eye-opening results.  While two-thirds of the organizations surveyed had a Facebook presence, only 17% had a formal process for responding to customer complaints through Facebook.  Only 19% have had an external presence on Facebook for more than two years.  24% of consumers surveyed stated that they were more likely to do business with a company they can interact with through a social media tool.  25% stated that social media comments influenced their opinions about companies and brands.

The real bottom line here is this….many organizations don’t know what to do with social media or how much to spend on it.  And they’re probably a long way away from understanding the ROI of dollars spent on social media.  But you have to spend it.  Period. If you aren’t doing it now or very, very soon….you are definitely losing ground to your competitors and with your current and potential customers.  It’s 2012….and social media is the new frontier.  It’s real-time.  It’s what every consumer, business professional and company executive uses in some way, shape, or form to gather information, form opinions, and yes – make some buying decisions.

I’ve realized this…partly on my own, partly from reading articles like the one in InformationWeek and partly because I have clients who realized it and came to me for help.  I’m not saying I can solve all of your problems.  I certainly can’t sell your product for you.  But I can use content mixed with social media promotion to increase your traffic – increase the number of potential buyers to your software, training and professional services so that you can start seeing some ROI.

I have many clients who ‘get it.’  They understand that they must reach potential customers and increase traffic in order to obtain and sustain long-term growth in their challenging marketplace.  And then I sometimes run into those potential clients who simply don’t get it – like two I’ve had just this week.  They are afraid to spend money without proof that their sales will increase.  Newsflash: I can’t sell your product for you!  If someone downloads your free trial and doesn’t like your product, that’s not my fault…that’s yours because your product doesn’t match up well with the customer’s needs or against your competition apparently.  I can’t fix that – unless you bring me in to consult on your product’s capabilities…and that’s a different type of consulting relationship altogether.  But I can get the traffic to you.  I can lead the horse to the water…and I can get that horse to your webinar, or to your website, or get them to download your free trial of your software.  The final sale is up to you.

If you’re interested in discussing how I can use my industry expertise, marketing creativity, and entrepreneurial flair to help your organization the way I’m currently helping dozens of others, contact me at brad@bradegeland.com or visit my website at www.bradegeland.com and fill out the contact form.  Or call me directly.  Leave a message – I’m here to help you.  I require no long-term commitment.  If you’re not happy after a month of working together, we simply quit.  But I promise I’ll do everything I can to retain your business first and tweak services so you do get the results you need.

Let’s talk.