Business Case Development:
Make the case for your critical investments

Reliable business cases are the basis of sound portfolio management for IT and other major enterprise initiatives. They give senior management the information needed to make optimum investment decisions. Especially important for government enterprises are OMB Exhibit 300 business cases, which are legally required to justify approval of all major federal IT initiatives.

A History of Winning Engagements

For more than a decade, SiloSmashers has provided extensive business case development and analysis, plus capital planning and investment control (CPIC) support, to numerous federal agencies implementing rigorous strategic and capital planning processes for their IT programs.

Many agencies have turned to us to develop OMB Exhibit 300 business cases. We have also analyzed and improved existing Exhibit 300s that scored low. Often, we have combined our business case support with process improvement, which is invaluable in the early stages of IT systems development. Analyzing and understanding the process improvements that an IT initiative will make possible is critical to developing an accurate – and winning – business case.

• Over the course of these engagements, SiloSmashers has developed a standard approach to business case development that includes working with program stakeholders to:
• Conduct comprehensive cost/benefit analysis
• Analyze Exhibit 300 Summary of Spending tables to ensure that they reflect project cash flows over the system life cycle
• Evaluate performance measures to assess how well they support OMB’s Performance Reference
• Model and specific agency performance guidelines
• Ensure that performance targets are reasonable and measurable
• Identify and analyze risks across all required categories with mitigation strategies for each risk
• Determine if costs and schedule are adjusted for risk
• Develop comprehensive earned-value baselines for the project
• Assess investment alignment with the Federal Enterprise Architecture to ensure cross-business case analysis
• Determine if all security risks and their costs have been accurately assessed and addressed