Product Management For Dummies

Chapter 9

Developing Your Business Case

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding the value of the business case

Breaking down a business case’s sections

Before you invest a large amount of time and money developing a new product or service it is best to create a cohesive business case. In product management, a business case has two key components: external market factors and internal product factors. In this chapter, we cover the external factors to consider when devising your business case (see Chapter 11 for information on the internal factors). The business case helps gain buy-in from your company’s executives to move forward with developing a product.

Here’s a look at what external factors this chapter discusses:

• Looking outside the company to the problem a customer has
• Seeking the potential opportunity to profitably address the customer’s problem
• Completing a deep analysis of the market and the competition

As part of your purchase, a Business Case template is included with the Product Management LifeCycle Toolkit (included as a free download with this book; see the Introduction, page 4, for details). The toolkit includes a template and completed sample business case. The sample document is written for a fictitious product which is an always-on, super-connected, hands-free phone in ...