I took part in a panel at last nights Toronto Product Managers Association meeting on building a business case. I’ve developed and executed alot of business cases and it was great to get different prespectives on the process. The panel consisted of :

• Paul Guinness: Senior Manager, TD Bank Financial Group
• Sanjay Singhal: Chairman and CMO, Simply Audiobooks Inc
• Colin Smillie ( myself ), Product Manage, Trader Media

The discussion focused alot around the different goals behind developing a business case and how these are vary based on the origanization. Paul’s prespective coming from Banking was that a business case is aways required to proceed and requires many levels or review and approval. Sanjay’s view was that in smaller companies the need to innovate is greater than the need to track your decisions process behind each innovation, the result is a much shorter business case review. My own views are somewhere in the middle since I’ve worked a variety of different size organizations and different stages of business development.

You can find the presentation here.