The Discipline of Project Justification

A multi-part series
By Tom DeVroy
VP of Sales

As Metrix launches this blog, I’ve been asked to contribute on topics that might be relevant to our target markets and customer installed base.

As VP-Sales I see a lot of prospects and customers make an effort to quantify the tangible business benefit of a service systems project. For that matter any significant project that impacts their business. This might include field automation, back office processing, integration, new field devices, communications, new service initiatives, etc. Often times the person who is the project lead does all of the homework, might establish good vendor relations, go through a thorough evaluation, and fall short of selling the final vision to management. Several variables, of equal weight need to be considered, in ‘selling’ a project to management.

Most management is interested in what impact the project is going to have on the business. What resources are involved, how long will it take, what risks do I face, and what can I expect at the conclusion of a successful project. How is this project going to either make me money, or save me costs.

This multi-part series will comment on some of these considerations. I’d like to organize the series as follows:

- Define the problem and build the hypothesis
- Establish the business case
- Articulate the solution
- Define the risks and assumption
- Establish the resource requirements and timeline
- Define the change management implications
- Build a narrative
- Separate hard and soft savings
- Pick a modeling tool
- Build a realistic financial model
- Define the tracking and reporting mechanisms

I’d really like these posts to focus on how a project lead sells a project to management. Even if management intuitively knows they have a problem, or that a better mousetrap can be designed, they need to have some confidence that what they are investing in will return some level of expectation. For instance, when you buy a new car you might go through the same kind of analysis. I like to use cars and houses as samples of buying patterns.

When you go to buy a car you usually will run through the following mental machinations. Do I really need this? For what? When? How much can I afford? What image will my car reflect on my family? These simple questions start to drive solutions - car types, models, and makes. But this is a long way from actually signing a deal with the sales guy.

In the next post I’m going to pose the question of building the hypothesis. If you have ideas or suggestions please share them with me.

View Part 2 Here
View Part 3 Here
View Part 4 Here
View Part 5 Here