Making The Case

he pitch is a delicate art. Hollywood writers are probably the masters of selling people on an idea and getting them to pay for it. One of the most legendary pitch tales is of a writer landing money for a TV movie with a proposal that was only a single sentence long.

Most pitches are never that easy, of course, because there's a big difference between making an idea sound good to people and getting them to believe it can be pulled off. And that is the challenge agencies across the government face as they seek funding from the Office of Management and Budget for their information technology projects.

Technology managers must pitch their ideas to OMB in the form of business cases. But far from being single-sentence propositions, business cases are painfully detailed descriptions of technology investments that agencies want to make. The best ones explain precisely what technology an agency wants to buy, why the agency wants to buy it and what benefits will result from spending millions of dollars. The well-sold ideas are funded first.

OMB officials say the need for business cases is clear. For years, the government has wasted money on technology projects that went nowhere. Agencies have created redundant systems, projects have gone over budget and many have suffered from poor management and lax oversight. The business case, ideally, forces an agency to say up front how it plans to avoid failure.

While the case-building process is arduous and frustrating for most, it also can be enlightening. A well-written business case shows agency managers whether they're making a wise investment, says Mike Parker, director of information technology business planning and assurance at the Treasury Department. "Future budgets are going to be determined by the soundness of business cases," he says.

OMB reviewers grade that soundness in a number of categories. Each category is scored individually, and those scores determine a final rating of 1 through 5. A rating of 5 or 4 is superior, and triggers a recommendation for funding. Anything less sends the business case writers back to the drawing board.

So, what makes a good business case? And how does OMB separate the best from the worst? Here are the main grading categories and tips from the experts on how to score high.

Acquisition strategy. Investments based on fixed-price contracts with performance measurements-standards that contractors must meet-earn higher scores. The administration has made performance-based contracting a top priority because it shifts more responsibility for success to the contractor, who can be penalized because of failures. It also mitigates risk for the agency.

But just having a performance-based contract isn't enough to score high, says Deborah Stouffer, the chief technology officer at the Environmental Protection Agency. Stouffer managed a massive review of redundant and overlapping technology systems throughout the government for OMB this year. If the contract doesn't define how the contractor must perform specific tasks, the score will be lower, she says.

Program management. OMB graders focus on whether agencies have competent management teams. A strong business case should explain how often a team will meet, how it will identify future costs and how it plans to set and achieve project goals. The more detailed the team description, the more credibility the business case will have, says Stouffer.

One senior OMB official says including a "work breakdown structure" that shows which team member will monitor a specific element of the project on a quarterly basis is a good way to ensure the team runs smoothly and impresses the graders.

Enterprise architecture. Business cases must show how a project fits into the agency's enterprise architecture-the overall blueprint that describes how technology systems are arranged based on the tasks they perform. Case writers should keep in mind how their project fits into the federal enterprise architecture that OMB is still developing. The federal business reference model, the product of the OMB review Stouffer conducted, describes the many tasks the government performs day to day and is a good guide to understanding how all the pieces should fit together.

Alternatives analysis. To get the highest score in this category, business cases must present three viable alternatives to the proposed project, and they must make the argument for why those alternatives should be discarded. The idea is to prove managers looked at a range of options and settled on the best one.

The alternatives all must be judged by the same criteria. Builders of business cases must spell out the benefits of the alternatives and whether they would save money or resources.

Risk management. In basic terms, a risk would be anything that might delay a project or throw it off course. OMB's eight categories of risk include security and availability of resources. High-scoring business cases lay out thorough assessments of all the risks, anticipate that some will occur and then include backup plans to keep projects moving.

Performance goals. A business case must show how the proposed project contributes to the agency's overall performance goals. The investment should jibe with the agency's annual performance plan, as well.

Security and privacy. OMB scrutinizes whether enough money has been invested to make a system secure. Have managers completed risk assessments to ensure compliance with securities laws and federal standards? If not, scores will be lower. If managers want to score high, business cases should explain how specific security devices, such as user identification tools, would be incorporated into the project.

Performance measurement. Managers must use a business methodology called earned value management to show how the project will add more value to the agency over time. Stouffer admits that many agency managers find calculating that value confusing. Case writers must set a performance baseline-a measurement of how well the system in place is performing now. Then, the business case should show what benefit the new investment will create and when that benefit will first be seen. Laying out those increments, Stouffer says, provides a road map for judging the project's performance over time.

GRAB YOUR PARTNER

In the future, OMB reviewers will give top funding priority to joint business cases, in which agencies team with one another or with state, local or tribal governments on the same project. By tying partnership to funding, one senior OMB official says, "We will get joint and collaborative projects across the federal government in an unprecedented fashion." Better cross-agency cooperation is one of the goals the administration hopes to achieve.

In a joint business case, one agency takes the lead role as the managing partner. OMB officials expect technology managers to find more ways to collaborate with other agencies and departments on projects to maximize investments and, most importantly, avoid duplicating systems.

To find out what agencies they can team with, managers can check the business reference model to see if their project is being done elsewhere. If it is, they might decide to modify their plans or join with another agency.

Agencies also have found private consultants to be partners of sorts when writing their business cases. OMB officials say most agencies hire consultants, and the administration encourages it. Laura Nash, a vice president with Robbins-Gioia, a consulting firm in Alexandria, Va., says the alternatives analysis category is one of the hardest things for federal managers to address. That's because it can be so time-consuming to review other technologies or projects.

CHANGES COMING

OMB officials are paying more attention to how agencies write their cases. Most agencies submit them first to an internal review panel, Stouffer says. But often, those groups don't consider whether their project conflicts with another in the government. When the case comes before OMB for review, officials nix it because of the overlap, Stouffer says. That kind of rejection, after hundreds of painstaking hours of work, comes way too late in the game, she says.

Next year, OMB expects agencies to get their business cases rolling by presenting a shorter version to their review panels first, Stouffer says. The case would get an inspection and then would be compared with the agency's enterprise architecture to avoid in-house redundancies. Then the panel would research the federal business reference model to avoid conflict with other agencies and to look for potential partners.

All that analysis, of course, depends on how well agencies have developed their enterprise architectures. Today, they're in a sorry state. In February, the General Accounting Office found that only 4 percent of agencies' architecture efforts have "matured" to the point where they could be considered effective.

Dave Zeppieri, the chief information officer at the Office of Justice Programs, agrees that developing architectures isn't technology managers' strength. It's hard enough for some to understand why an architecture is necessary, but even harder for most people to understand how to write one, says Zeppieri, who reviews his agency's business cases before they're sent to OMB. Zeppieri says his agency usually requires outside help from consultants to nail down the architectural component of a business case.

To get managers the help they need not just with architectures but with business cases, OMB provides annual training on the various categories and how they're scored.

But more important than learning the mechanics of writing business cases is the ability to effectively manage a project. And that's not something easily taught.

It's one thing to propose an investment, Stouffer says. The art of the pitch can be taught. But it's another thing entirely to do what you propose, she says. That's a skill that has to be developed.

There are few ways to do that, other than through experience. The Project Management Institute, a not-for-profit association outside Philadelphia, offers professional certifications that are held in high regard worldwide. The institute has certified 50,000 managers who work in 120 countries. Stouffer says the certificate gives government project managers a great deal of credibility. But generally, the skills of an effective project manager need to be learned by trial and error over the course of a career.

Ultimately, writing the business case may be one of the best ways managers can hone their skills because, to write it well, they have to think beyond the paper it's printed on and envision how the plan will actually work. "The business case makes people think through not only what they want to do, but whether or not they've selected the best way to go about it," Stouffer says.