Business Case ROI

In this article, Susan Case asked if business cases are a waste of time. Her answer was "yes", but do them anyway.

Although she didn't quite put it this way, what I heard her saying was that opportunities are often a mixture of Simple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic (Cynefin taxonomy). We tend to limit business cases to the analytic (i.e., Complicated) domain.

However, most opportunities will have Complex aspects that must be addressed with techniques that are more exploratory than exploitative. Susan clearly understands this and helps highlight the limits of analysis in achieving a positive ROI when pursuing an opportunity.