Pant Business Case Review

PANT Business Case Review

Purpose

Test whether the evidence justifies the requested product investment, not merely whether a spreadsheet contains benefits and costs. Match the burden of proof to the size, reversibility, and consequence of the commitment. Apply the bundled runtime contracts independently.

When to Use

Use for funding requests, capacity investments, build-versus-buy recommendations, new-product bets, expansion proposals, modernization cases, and requests to move from probe to scale.

When Not to Use

Use pant-market-sizing-review for the integrity of TAM, SAM, SOM, or reachable-market estimates. Use pant-strategy-review when the strategic choice itself is undefined. Use pant-executive-decision-review to rehearse the broader executive room after the economics are strengthened. This skill does not replace finance, legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice.

Supported Modes and Entry Paths

• Feedback: Apply shared feedback mode and the investment output.
• Dialogue: Rehearse one investment challenge at a time using shared dialogue behavior.
• Direct: Begin from the supplied case, model, memo, or compact brief.
• Guided: Explain value, evidence, full cost, alternatives, uncertainty, and decision conditions; ask one consequential question at a time.
• Best effort: State assumptions, avoid filling absent numbers with inventions, and identify the smallest responsible decision.

Decision Being Prepared For

Prepare a decision to fund, staff, continue, expand, defer, narrow, stop, or investigate a defined product investment.

Typical Audiences

Executives, finance and investment partners, portfolio councils, product and technology leaders, sponsors, founders, and governance groups.

Inputs

Best input includes the ask, baseline, benefits, causal logic, cost range, time horizon, alternatives, opportunity cost, adoption assumptions, risks, sensitivity, and evidence. Minimum input is a proposed investment and claimed reason.

Direct example:

Use pant-business-case-review to test whether this proposal supports a pilot, full investment, or neither. Challenge benefits, full cost, adoption, timing, opportunity cost, and sensitivity.

Sparse example:

I need three engineers for an AI feature because two customers asked for it. Help me build a defensible case.

Quick Start

1. Name the exact investment decision and commitment level.
2. Read business-case decision logic.
3. Establish baseline, benefit mechanism, full cost, alternatives, and timing.
4. Classify evidence and test sensitivity at the requested commitment level.
5. Prefer a bounded probe when proof supports learning but not scale.

Review Workflow

1. Name the decision. Distinguish discovery funding, pilot approval, continuation, and scale.
2. Find what survives. Preserve supported demand signals, bounded costs, credible constraints, and explicit uncertainty.
3. Establish the baseline. Ask what happens without the investment and how that condition is evidenced.
4. Test benefit logic. Trace product change to adoption or behavior, operational or customer effect, and economic or mission consequence.
5. Test full cost and timing. Include discovery, delivery, data, enablement, support, operations, delay, and ongoing ownership.
6. Test alternatives and opportunity cost. Compare doing nothing, smaller probes, process change, buy/partner options, and displaced work where credible.
7. Test uncertainty and sensitivity. Identify which uncertain inputs can reverse the decision; reject false precision.
8. Test ownership and realization. Name who must deliver, adopt, operate, and measure benefits.
9. Set decision conditions. Define success, stop, continuation, and return-for-decision thresholds.
10. Issue a contextual verdict. Tie readiness to audience, commitment, consequence, and evidence.

Escape a financial template when weak customer evidence, strategy, reachability, or operating ownership becomes the dominant risk.

Dialogue Protocol

Begin with the load-bearing economic or causal assumption most likely to change the investment decision. Ask one question, use the answer, and update the concern. At higher pressure, demand explicit downside and opportunity cost without turning uncertainty into an impossible standard. Honor coaching and debrief controls.

Output

Use the shared feedback order and add an Investment decision brief:

• Decision and commitment level
• Baseline and consequence of no action
• Benefit mechanism and strongest evidence
• Full cost, timing, ownership, and opportunity cost
• Alternatives considered
• Load-bearing assumptions and sensitivity cases
• Success, stop, and return-for-decision conditions
• Smallest responsible next commitment
• Contextual readiness verdict

Use template.md for a reusable artifact.

Failure Modes

• Presenting magical revenue without a behavior-to-economics path
• Counting requested features as realized benefits
• Omitting enablement, support, data, operating, or opportunity costs
• Treating TAM as obtainable revenue
• Using one precise forecast while hiding uncertain inputs
• Treating approval to probe as approval to scale
• Demanding perfect proof before a reversible learning investment
• Recreating finance theater instead of improving the decision

Evaluation Requirements

Evaluate correct and neighboring triggers; probe-versus-scale; strong and weak cases; minimal and rich context; all modes and entry paths; baseline, benefit causality, full cost, alternatives, opportunity cost, sensitivity, adoption, ownership, persuasion, framework escape, and verdicts.

Supporting Files

• Business-case template
• Business-case decision logic
• Sources and adaptations
• Bundled runtime contract
• Worked example
• Weak example

Provenance

Informed by PANT's Phase 0 synthesis, its evidence model, and common investment-analysis principles. It is a product decision pressure test, not an official finance methodology.