The business case and the observed gain

The Business case block sits on the initiative's page, under the texts. Four buttons: + Money out, + Internal time, + Gain, and Drop a file or Paste to read existing figures. Each line has a label (What it is), an amount in euros or in days, and, once saved, a source (Where this figure comes from) and a low and high Range.

A gain line first asks How this gain becomes money, its path. The path sets the line's kind.

On a gain, Note the start value records today's value, its unit, where it is read, and the reading date. Without a start value, the gain can only be observed by declaration. Under the cost list, Often forgotten chips add in one click a line already named: integration, data preparation, licences, API and cloud consumption, human review, supervision, training, process redesign, security and compliance.

Four figures: to invest (of which what leaves the company), net per year (running costs deducted), the months to pay back (or "Never" when running it costs more than the gain), and the break-even: the minimum yearly gain to pay back over the horizon, as a share of the announced gain. A sentence reads them out, over three years, in current euros.

Days given back do not count in the payback. The block says how many are really usable: 40 % are lost correcting what the tool did, and 50 % of the rest goes to other work. Change these rates sets them for the whole workspace. The delivery date comes from the attached GitHub milestone, otherwise from the End date; a month of delay pushes back part of the gain, and the block puts a figure on it.

Two free fields: Assumptions (what must be true for these figures to hold) and What would stop the initiative (a usage floor, a cost ceiling per request, a minimum quality), repeated on the committee's decision card. The first time a gain in money appears, the workspace asks From what yearly amount does a gain really count for you?: this threshold proposes the financial impact rung.

As soon as there is an investment, Bring to a committee offers an upcoming or live session and asks the decision Do we commit … to …? there. Yes when the session closes validates the business case: the decision's owner answers for the gain, the decision's date becomes the review date. The block moves from Costed to Validated.

After the yes, three dates counted from go-live (the later of the decision and the delivery): At 30 days, usage; At 90 days, the metric; At one year, the gain, or At the review, the gain when the decision set a date. Each reading becomes "to read" seven days before its date and "late" after. Read records the value, its source, and for the metric the comparison to the start and How it is observed.

Record the gain asks for the Net gain observed, per year, its source and its proof mode. The block then writes "Recorded on …: … per year for … promised", below, above, or as promised, and moves to Observed.

A case goes back to To review when the cost or the gain moved by more than 20 % since the decision, when the review was not done on its date, or when more than a fifth of the promised gain is missing. Doing better than promised does not send it back to the committee.

Foundation work brings nothing on its own: it is costed by its cost, and its Value at stake is read on the initiatives that say they depend on it (Depends on line on their page): "n initiatives depend on this work. Their cases announce … net per year." An Obligation is costed by its cost: it is not asked to pay back.

Drop a file or Paste reads figures already written elsewhere: spreadsheet, document, deck, PDF, image, text (4 MB at most). A Read in … screen shows each line found, where it comes from (sheet and cell, page, slide) and the quoted passage; you tick what goes in. Nothing is written before Add.