Business Case Builder

Business Case Builder

Purpose

Builds a full business case: problem, solution, economics (ROI/NPV/IRR), risks, timeline, stakeholders, recommendation.

Anchored in research

• IIBA BABOK
• PMI Business Analysis
• w95/awesome-claude-corporate-skills — business-case-builder structure

Method

1. State the problem or opportunity in business terms first — the gap between the current and the desired state — before any solution is named. A business case that opens with the solution has already skipped the justification step BABOK requires.
2. Lay out the options actually considered, including "do nothing" as a baseline — a business case with only one option isn't a comparison, it's a pitch. The cost of inaction (of the status quo continuing) is what the recommended option has to beat.
3. Build the economic case using this pack's roi-npv-sensitivity-model skill for the cost/benefit analysis (ROI/NPV/IRR, sensitivity) — don't compute the financials inline here; reference the dedicated skill so the numbers stay in one place and follow one method.
4. Bring in risk (via risk-matrix-and-mitigation) and stakeholder mapping (via stakeholder-analysis-and-raci) as sections of the case rather than afterthoughts — PMI's business analysis practice treats these as integral to the recommendation, not an appendix.
5. Sequence the implementation at a milestone level (not a detailed project plan) — enough to show the case is achievable in the proposed timeframe, with dependencies flowing from the other sections (e.g. a resourcing risk flagged in the risk matrix should show up here too).
6. Close with an explicit recommendation and the decision being asked of the reader — what they're being asked to approve, by when, and what happens if they don't decide.

What this skill does NOT do

• Doesn't make the final decision for you — it produces a structured draft to support a human decision.
• Doesn't confirm figures, market data, or competitor data from memory — it uses the inputs you provide, or marks an assumption clearly ([assumption — verify]).
• Doesn't approve a budget or make the investment decision — it produces decision-ready material for whoever does approve it.

Refinement notes

Areas to keep deepening with real practice:

• your own rules of thumb and heuristics for this technique
• concrete templates (into ../../references/)
• reference cases / your own examples
• what this skill deliberately does not do (guardrails, common mistakes) — add to the list above

This is an internal working note, not a claim about the skill's current usability. Track depth privately via the maturity field in skills_index.json (see ../../../meta/maturity_levels.md). Don't add new fields to the frontmatter — name and description are the only ones allowed (see ../../../meta/frontmatter_schema.md).

Continue from here

• Next in this pack: ../roi-npv-sensitivity-model/SKILL.md — Calculates ROI, NPV, and IRR plus a sensitivity analysis across scenarios.
• Before this (if there's a demo or PoC behind it whose results feed in as input): ../../../prototyping-and-demonstration/skills/demo-to-business-case-bridge/SKILL.md — translates the demo's results into validated ROI inputs with a transparent assumption chain before they're used here.
• A ready-made skill chain for this situation: see ../../../playbooks/
• If the case is for a public-sector, municipal, or non-profit client: frame the value case first with ../../../specialisation-packs/public-sector-ai-service-design/skills/ps-public-value-business-case-framing/SKILL.md — public value (efficiency, service quality, equity, trust) often doesn't reduce to a pure ROI story the way this skill's default economics section assumes.
• This pack's shared guardrails: ../../CLAUDE.md

References

• ../../references/ — the pack's shared background material
• ../../CLAUDE.md — the pack's shared guardrails