PRINCE2 Business Case – Mission Statement
The mission statement is the combination of the goal and objectives of the opportunity. That goal is the business driver stated in the executive summary.
The objectives are quantitative or measurable indicators that indicate whether the opportunity has achieved its goal or that the problem has been solved.
Setting PRINCE2 SMART Objectives
When writing objectives, you must make sure they are SMART. There are many definitions of this acronym – but here is mine:
Specific. The goal must be clear and unambiguous. Explained to the project management team exactly what is expected such as “identify new customer leads for product XYZ”. In this case, you know exactly what type of customer leads you need to get.
Measurable. The goals threshold for success must be something you can directly measure such as “identified 150 new customer leads”. This tells you precisely how many customer leads you must generate vs. a more general goal like “identify more customer leads”.
The reason you create a measurement is to assess or progress to the goal and to know when you have met it.
Attainable. You want to make sure the goal you set can be reached and that it is realistic. As another example, if you sell a specialized high-end expensive home alarm system, identifying 4000 new prospects may not be attainable as the market is not large enough.
Relevant. The objective needs to be relevant to the organization and matter to the organization. The best advice I can give here is to make it relevant to the organization mission or strategy. It must be obvious that it is highly relevant to those who will read to business case and in particular those who will need to commit to it.
Time-bound. This part of the objective tells you when you need to measure to see how well you achieved, or not achieved, your specific goal. As an organization, you will know when this objective needs to be in place and when you need to measure whether you achieved it.
Using our example, if the business driver states the goal as “The organization wants to offer training to project managers who work remotely and cannot travel”, Some corresponding smart objectives could be:
- Training courses on project scoping offer two will remote workers by the end of the first quarter
- 80 % of the project managers complete at least one training course by the end of the third quarter this year
- No travel costs will be incurred this year for any training course is attended by remote workers
Using PRINCE2 key performance indicators
Another approach to defining the mission statement is using key performance indicators or KPI’s
KPI’s are also objectives, but they relate to the ultimate desired outcome for the business vs. the desired outcome for the project.
The KPI’s All those measurements that most effectively predict success and include those performance measures that are key to identify that a solution is, or is not performing.
In the training example, the objectives are about delivering training for project managers without travel, but if your desired outcome is to Improve your scope process for projects, then your KPI’s Would be different for the objectives listed earlier.
As an example, KPI’s to improve your scope process could be the following:
- Students must achieve a 95 percent or higher score on the course exam
- Business problem statements will be accurately described in every Project scope Project Brief document
- 98 percent of all external and remote employees will be identified at the time of the original scope
The mission statement and the corresponding measurements depend on the opportunity for which the business case is being written and the audience that will be reviewing it for sign off.
PRINCE2 Business Case credibility
If the audience for your business case are not convinced to approve the project off to reading the executive summary or mission statement, they may simply want to know all the information before signing off on it.
It is possible that they may have other concerns, perhaps they’re not comfortable with the information that was summarized, or they do not know or trust you as the writer because they don’t know you.
The latter is unlikely if you are using the PRINCE2 Method, As the project board executive will have been already identified as the right person to run the project board and own the business case.
The description of the approach used section is really about credibility for the development of the business case and it is an opportunity to reinforce why the audience should rely on the information contained within the business case.
You achieve this goal by describing the following:
- The individuals who provided background for the opportunity and business drivers
- The steps taken to validate the business driver
- The experts or external vendor wars research to provide solution options
- Where data was compiled from to support the cost/benefit analysis
- The level of analysis effort and significant activities performed to recommend the solution
Okay, so now you are able to start writing a compelling Business Case – Well Done….next up….
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