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PRINCE2 Business Case Practitioner Answers 

 April 10, 2013

By  Dave Litten

Improving your prince2 practitioner business case question scores

frankly, the initiative for this post came out of some questions from one of my customers, who was having a hard time deciphering some of the business case practitioner exam potential answers. In her frustration she emailed me to voice her frustrations.

Like most things in life, it always seems easy when you know the answers, and as a tutor, i find it helpful to ‘step into her shoes’ to see the problem through her lens.

Doing that helped me to help her, and this brief post will bring out my business case answers that she found helpful – hopefully for you too!

These were the practitioner type questions that asked you to pick out the two correct answers from the five given. They related to the header sections within a prince2 business case. I won’t repeat the questions themselves, but far more importantly, i will show you the thinking behind my logical choices:

most of the clues regarding the business case questions are mentioned in appendix a of the prince2 manual as well as in my primer, but here are some general pointers which i think you will find useful:

question. Which are the two correct choices for each of these sections within a prince2 business case?

Reasons.

Business reasons are always in the past or present – never in the future. They are usually a statement of a current problem, or an opportunity that is waiting to be grasped. They are the business drivers for the project. The most common mistake is to confuse these with benefits. Here is a classic exam error; “the reason we are doing this project is to increase out future revenues and profit margins” wrong! A reasonable reason may state that customer orders are reducing (current/past problem), or that a new emerging technology could be build into our product range to make our products more competitive (potential opportunity).

Options.

These are the business options, and should always consider three scenarios, do nothing, do the minimum (cheap and quick), or do something. Any of these options may be the right one, and so a full justification should be given for the correct option There are two areas where a candidate may get this wrong.

The first is to confuse this with the project approach – which is how we will approach the delivery of the project – not a business option, and the second is to forget that the ‘do nothing’ option acts as a benchmark to ensure that the right choice is made.

When a candidate sees the ‘do nothing’ as a potential answer, they ignore it instead of correctly seeing it as a legitimate answer. Wrong!

Benefits.

These will always be in the future and will be business benefits! The examiner will often add in estimate statements as potential (wrong) answers.

Do not confuse business benefits with reductions in project delivery costs. Benefits usually relate to the operational side of the project end product.

So, increasing future revenue streams, reduction in manufacturing costs, reduced operational or marketing risk, increased market share, are all examples of business benefits.

Dis-benefits.

Similar to above, but remember that a dis-benefit is an expected and predicted outcome. They should not be confused with risks!

A dis-benefit is an expected ‘downside’ (a negative outcome benefit), that will occur as a consequence of gaining positive benefits. Whereas benefits should be maximized through management action, then a dis-benefit should be minimized through management action A common candidate error here, is confusing a dis-benefit with a risk (which may, or may not materialize), so watch out for words like ‘may’ in wrong answers! Also, increasing costs in project delivery are not dis-benefits…

Timescales.

Check out appendix a in the prince2 manual. It clearly states that this section should show the project timescale, any key business milestone timescales, and the timescale for benefit realization (for example; “we will get an increase in profit margins by 5% in june 2014”)

costs.

Business case costs should include not just the project budget, but also a statement of where funding is to be obtained (a business case is a waste of time, if the project can’t be financed!).

Risks.

Watch out for bogus issues included as potential wrong answers! Remember that a risk is something that may or may not happen at some point in the future, whereas an issue has already happened (or is predicted to happen).

Okay, I hope that helped to clear up a few problems for you and increase your scores for prince2 business case practitioner questions!

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Dave Litten


Dave has spent 25 years as a senior project manager for USA multinationals and has deep experience in project management. He now develops a wide range of Project Management Masterclasses, under the Projex Academy brand name. In addition, David runs project management training seminars across the world, and is a prolific writer on the many topics of project management.

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