The business case for any major project or programme is fundamental to achieving management commitment, particulary so in the Agile world, where the focus is on the outcome and the benefits that ensue.

As we progress through any project, we learn more about what benefits are feasible, possible, or even desirable.  Agile projects are designed so that some benefits can be realised early, often improving the business case.  The actual realisation of early benefits further informs the business case for later iterations.

It seems that Benefits, like everything else in a project, are “inherently Agile”.  Therefore the business case has to be Agile, which can be a challenge for some governance structures.

The approval of a project in the Agile approach should be “good enough to get started” with commitments to fund the initial investigation and one or two iterations. Thereafter, the benefits case, like everything else in an Agile endeavour, should be reviewed regularly.