Artifacts

Business Change

The Charter

A clear definition of the need. A statement by the business of what is desired and why, whether budget exists and a rough order of magnitude to the effort to provide.
A low effort exercise covered by overhead costs
Signed off by Business Owner

This document builds upon the initial Charter by providing a more detailed and confident articulation of the initiative. Its primary purpose is to communicate the anticipated scale, scope, and potential impact of the project, and to secure agreement to proceed with further exploration.
The outcome of this phase is a more comprehensive specification that will inform Solution Design and support accurate Statement of Work (SOW) costing.
Typically, this stage requires relatively low effort and cost, often covered by overhead budgets. However, depending on the complexity of the initiative and the surrounding political or environmental context, it may evolve into a more substantial exercise.
Final approval is provided by the designated Business Owner.

Explores key capabilities, it enables business leaders to understand the concepts of the service being proposed and is usually sufficient to enable a Business Case to created and presented.
Medium in effort, usually sustained via overhead funding.
It results in the ability to submit a high-level Business Case (may be required if there is a need to engage contractors in a more detailed requirements gathering activity.

Detailed assessment often incorporating technical specifications, service design, test and user acceptance testing. Some of these artefacts are produced inhouse, some by the supplier/contractor. This is typical for major IT service development.
Enables a full high quality Business Case to be presented to elicit formal approval to proceed to build and deployment

A clear definition of the supplier’s interpretation of the need.
A statement by the business of what is desired and why, whether budget exists and a rough order of magnitude to the effort and cost to provide.
Usually low in effort sustained by overhead costs.
More usually provided by the Supplier and is accompanied by a Statement of Works/Proposal

Outline business case to engage in Supplier engagement to achieve design and detailed costs.
Used to communicate the need at the strategic level i.e., Budget Forecast communication.
Costs values are usually Rough order of magnitude – 50, 100, 250… never finite.

Once consent has been granted to proceed with the delivery of a service. A project is created.
The Project has a clear Mandate, usually the Brief as a point of reference.
A dedicated Project Manager is appointed and if externally sourced, at costs that can be capitalised.
Estimates for delivery and costs are maintained and revised as experiences occur.
Allocated resources usually include the Requirements Analyst and Senior Users who support the delivery throughout.
Project Management principles including communications and reporting (typically Prince 2 aligned) are followed.

Once consent has been granted to proceed with the delivery of a service. A project is created.
The Project has a clear Mandate, usually the Brief as a point of reference.
A dedicated Project Manager is appointed and if externally sourced, at costs that can be capitalised.
Estimates for delivery and costs are maintained and revised as experiences occur.
Allocated resources usually include the Requirements Analyst and Senior Users who support the delivery throughout.
Project Management principles including communications and reporting (typically Prince 2 aligned) are followed.

A service description and point of reference enabling effective take up of support by business-as-usual support functions.
Enables project delivery teams to hand over support responsibilities (and to focus upon other new initiatives).
It covers service descriptions, architecture, known issues at handover, reference material e.g., manuals and support processes with agreed service levels.
It is a consolidation of all known, developed and previously communicated (and accepted) detail in a single place.
It enables business and IT support teams to understand the support roles and responsibilities for the new service being delivered.
Usually completed by the Business Analyst
Signed off by Business Owner and IT Service Owners.