Stakeholder-led business case development

Over the last few years, I keep thinking that the penny has finally dropped – it’s the stakeholders that count!  People in projects talk about stakeholders, even the project management associations talk about stakeholders, yet when you listen carefully, you start to wonder.  Are the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of stakeholder engagement really understood? 

One area you’d think was undeniably a stakeholder intensive process is the development of the business case.  Surely this is critical to the stakeholders and the investors in the project?   But no! Today, business cases are often written by specialists in writing business cases, or worse, the project manager, and often in parallel or even after the project has started.

One relatively recent improvement is that you find a whole section entitled ‘Stakeholders’ in a good business case.  Yes, it has an entire section!  But often, the content and purpose are problematic.  It should neither be a list nor where stakeholder analysis is written up.   What it should do is provide evidence in support of the three functions of any business case.

What are these three?