Business Case & Product Plan

A Business Case is used to decide if an idea makes sound business sense and to persuade key stakeholders to invest. As a product manager, it’s usually about justifying investment in a new product or release.

Once a product is in-life, businesses usually produce a Product Plan to explain and get buy-in to future plans.

As a business, you’ll need to agree on a standard format. This infographic shows the topics to cover in a comprehensive Business Case or Product Plan and the range of tools that can help in each area. You’ll need to decide which topics and what level of detail is necessary for your product. In many companies, the Business Case turns into the Product Plan once the product is launched.

There are 8 sections:

• Executive Summary – why should the company invest?
• Product Description – what do we propose doing?
• Strategy – how does what we’re proposing fit with other things going on in the company and help us deliver on longer-term objectives?
• Market Analysis – why do we think we’ll be successful against the competition, and how big is the opportunity?
• Customer Analysis – why do we think customers will buy and pay what we want?
• Financial Analysis – do the numbers hit the targets the business expects?
• Plans – if the investment goes ahead, then what will happen when?
• Recommendation – what do we want?

Download the infographic and use it to help define the standard business case template for your business or the content to include in a Product Plan.

You may also want to take a look at articles in our Business Case Journal.

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