Better Business Cases Practitioner - Project Management Training

Introduction

Better Business Cases™ is a systematic and objective approach to all stages of the business case development process that sits alongside and complements the HM Treasury’s Green Book guidance.

The course and examination are based on The Five Case Model, the UK government’s best practice approach to planning spending proposals and enabling effective business decisions. This provides a step-by-step guide to developing a business case, by:

• Establishing a clear need for intervention - a case for change
• Setting clear objectives - what you want to achieve from the investment
• Considering a wide range of potential solutions - ensuring an optimal balance of benefits, cost and risk
• Putting the arrangements in place to successfully deliver the proposal.

The following pre-course reading will be e-mailed to you as a PDF document. Please ensure you have the right software available to read/extract a PDF file. The pre-course reading takes approximately 8- 10 hours to perform and consists of the following:

1) Better Business Case® Workbook Pre-course study
2) Green Book Guidance On Public Sector Business Cases Using The Five Case Model

In addition, delegates will be required to complete a MINIMUM of 1 hour of homework each evening.

Prerequisites

You will need to have been successful at the Better Business Cases Foundation exam to take the Practitioner exam.

Having attended the Better Business Cases Foundation course, you will need to ensure you have with you the Welsh Government Green Book Guidance on Public Sector Business Cases Using The Five Case Model document. This will be required for the open book Practitioner exam.

Who is the course for?

The course is relevant to those responsible for developing and producing spending proposals or their assessment and approval; in particular:

• Accounting Officers - responsible for delivering public value
• Senior Responsible Owners (SROs), Programme Directors and Project Managers, responsible for successful delivery
• Directors of Finance, procurement and planning, responsible for the forward planning and prioritization of spending proposals
• Members of approvals and management boards with responsibility for scrutinizing or approving spending proposals

What will I learn?

• The importance of the business case
• Types of business cases
• The Five Case model
• An improved understanding of the Better Business Case process
• Understanding of an established and proven methodology which can be applied at both strategic (macro) and tactical (micro) level
• Core business competency for any manager or director

Course Outline

• Strategic Outline Programme (SOP) for policy, regulation and grants programmes.
• The Business Case Development from the Strategic Outline Case (SOC) to the Outline Business Case (OBC) to the Full Business Case (FBC) for major projects.
• Business Justification Case (BJC) for minor spending proposals.
• The 10 step delivery process.
• The key roles in the business case development

Each course has time for discussions and group exercises giving you the chance to discuss your own projects and how the BBC course can be adopted and adapted to suit your organisation.

Practitioner Level

The purpose of the Practitioner qualification is to confirm whether you have achieved sufficient understanding of the theory and application of the Five Case Model to allow them to effectively develop and produce a business case. A successful Practitioner candidate should be able to start applying the model to a real project.

Examination Format

• Objective testing
• 4 questions per paper, with 20 marks available per question
• 40 marks or more required to pass (out of 80 available) - 50%
• 2 ½ hours duration
• Open book exam (Delivering Public Value from Spending Proposals: Green Book Guidance on Public Sector Business Cases Using the Five Case Model only)