Government’s finance department has created new advice for organisations delivering agile projects which, the guidelines state, can often meet the necessary governance requirements without their own dedicated full business case
HM Treasury has released new guidance for creating business cases for digital and agile projects, in which departments are advised to take a “light-touch” approach to setting out their plans.
The Central Digital and Data Office supported the Treasury in developing the guidelines, which are intended to help “realise the potential of the agile approach to produce better systems more quickly and cheaply than conventional IT planning and project management”.
The defining feature of agile approaches is splitting projects into stages – typically following the nomenclature of an initial discovery phase, followed by alpha, then beta and, finally, live. This allows project plans to be reevaluated and reset at regular intervals, rather than following proposals put in place at the outset.
The Treasury advice document primarily addresses agile projects that form an individual strand of a much broader transformation initiative. The guidelines set out how these projects can often be scrutinised and approved within the context of the wider programme’s governance – rather than requiring their own dedicated detailed business case processes. The guidelines are divided into advice sections across three categories.
The first of these contains guidance for delivering the discovery and alpha phases for all agile projects. This encompasses initial user research and design, followed by the earliest stages of product development.
The guidance advises departments that “agile projects are frequently part of wider business programmes to be delivered for reasons of either business transformation or business continuity [and], even before discovery and alpha, departments should have a clear justification for why such scoping is financially and strategically worthwhile”.
Even while commencing work with such clear ideas, organisations should regard “the discovery and subsequent stages [as] learning phases that feed back into the evolving project business case and into the wider programme business case (PBC) of which the project is a part”.
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Given that these early stages are relatively inexpensive to deliver and often take place within the context of a wider scheme, the Treasury advises that “the business case and approval [for these stages can] be streamlined and tailored to suit the needs of the programme and project”.
The standard approval process for project plans follows three stages: a strategic outline case; followed by an outline business case; and, lastly; a full business case (SOC, OBC and FBC).
But these formalities “can be adapted to support something more suited to agile”, the Treasury says, which involves “project approvals using a light-touch OBC only, [which] may be iterative”.
OBC, PBC – TBC
The other two categories covered by the advice document respectively cover larger and smaller agile projects, the dividing line for which is a cost of £10m.
While all such projects require Treasury approval, smaller or lower-risk work “can be approved and managed against the PBC without needing a separate OBC” for the individual project in question.
Even for some larger endeavours, the green light can be achieved “using an agreed plan of monitoring and approval points set out in the management plan of the PBC rather than through a classic three-stage process” for the discrete project.
Even for those that do require their own dedicated business case “project-level approval for larger agile projects should use a light touch OBC and try to minimise traditional detailed IT planning documents”, the guidelines state.
“Instead, they should focus on user needs, business outcomes, costs and milestones within the context of a wider programme business case,” it adds. “This project approval process should be agreed as part of the wider management plan of the wider PBC. We recommend that management review meetings should use digital service demonstrations and agile artefacts (e.g. burn charts, backlogs).”
The guidance also makes provisions for departments undertaking “a programme [with] numerous agile projects, each of which is below £10m spend but which, in aggregate cost over £10m, [which] typically happens in a department-wide transformation programme”.
“In this case, a PBC should be used rather than multiple OBCs,” the Treasury advises. “But the PBC should contain a significant degree of economic scrutiny proportionate to the spend. It is also particularly crucial when managing a programme of agile work to schedule regular reviews and to use the service demonstration, burn charts and backlogs to give the approving authority a high level of visibility and control over the speed of progress and the prioritisation of tasks. Using the PBC process has the advantage that, as well as being relatively light touch for the agile project, it also highlights clearly how the agile work fits into a wider programme by flagging dependencies.”
The guidance concludes with a schedule and timeline of the steps that departments should follow to comply with spend-control and service-assessment requirements for each stage of an agile project.
