--- name: business-case description: "The cost of the status quo, what the fix actually costs, and the quantified value it returns — with payback period and 3-year return on investment (ROI) computed from those numbers, not asserted, and every value driver's basis and confidence named plainly. Use when: You're proposing a real investment — capital, a new system, dedicated time — and need more than 'this seems worth it' to get it approved. You want to know honestly which parts of the case are backed by real data and which are still an estimate worth flagging. Not for: The investment is trivial enough that building a formal case costs more time than the decision itself is worth — use judgement, not process, for a small call. You don't have any real data yet, just a hunch that something would help — go gather evidence first (a gemba walk, a VOC pass), or every driver in this case will be a guess dressed up as a number." --- # Business case The cost of the status quo, what the fix actually costs, and the quantified value it returns — with payback period and 3-year return on investment (ROI) computed from those numbers, not asserted, and every value driver's basis and confidence named plainly. Family: Kaizen events · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is A business case puts a real number on why an investment is worth making — the cost of the status quo, what the fix actually costs, and the quantified value it returns, with payback period and 3-year ROI computed from those numbers rather than asserted. Every value driver carries how the number was derived and how confident you actually are in it — a driver with no real basis is named as a gap, not hidden behind a confident-sounding total. It's the resourcing step that naturally comes before a kaizen event charter: before committing a team's time to an improvement, this is what earns that commitment. ## When to use it Use it when: - You're proposing a real investment — capital, a new system, dedicated time — and need more than 'this seems worth it' to get it approved. - You want to know honestly which parts of the case are backed by real data and which are still an estimate worth flagging. - The investment is heading toward a decision-maker who will ask how you got these numbers, not just what they add up to. Not when: - The investment is trivial enough that building a formal case costs more time than the decision itself is worth — use judgement, not process, for a small call. - You don't have any real data yet, just a hunch that something would help — go gather evidence first (a gemba walk, a VOC pass), or every driver in this case will be a guess dressed up as a number. - You're building the countermeasure itself, not funding it — that's an A3's job; a business case exists to justify committing resources, not to solve the problem directly. ## How to fill it in - **costOfInaction** — What does the current state keep costing, in real terms, and why does that matter now rather than later? - **investment** — Describe roughly what the fix costs — one-time and ongoing — and a first-pass itemized estimate gets drafted for you to correct with real numbers. - **valueDrivers** — Drafted from your description of the proposal — each with how the number was derived and how confident it actually is. Don't fill these in directly; describe the proposal and let a first draft come back. - **roiSummary** — Computed for you from investment and value drivers — nothing to enter here. - **assumptions** — Drafted alongside the value drivers — what has to stay true for these numbers to hold. - **narrative** — Drafted executive summary — the shape of the case in words, never restating the computed numbers itself. - **nextSteps** — What needs firming up before this case goes to whoever approves it, ranked by impact and effort, owned and dated. ## What good looks like The example below justifies an automated inspection station for a solder-defect problem — two of three value drivers are grounded in real quality-log and time-study data, and the third, a faster product-launch estimate, is honestly left at low confidence rather than padded to make the total look stronger. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/business-case ## Common mistakes - **Writing a value driver with no real basis behind it.** — A number with nothing behind it gets challenged the moment someone asks how you got it — and once one number falls apart, the reader stops trusting the rest of the case too. - **Padding the case with low-confidence drivers to inflate the total.** — The honest total, with its weak points named, survives scrutiny. A total padded with shaky numbers just gives a skeptical reviewer a reason to distrust the whole case. - **Skipping the cost of inaction and only presenting the upside.** — A case that only shows what you gain, never what continuing to wait already costs, is missing half the argument for acting now instead of later. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **A3 problem solving** (`a3`) — A countermeasure identified in an A3 that needs real resourcing is exactly what turns into a business case — the A3 finds the fix, this justifies committing to it. Downstream: - **Kaizen event charter** (`kaizen-charter`) — Once a business case earns the investment, a kaizen event charter is where the actual work gets planned and resourced day to day. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a drafted value driver's basis is actually solid enough to stand behind - Deciding which low-confidence driver to firm up before presenting the case Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting itemized investment and value drivers from a description of the proposal - Drafting the narrative from the case actually built Drudgery — automated: - Computing payback period and 3-year ROI from the numbers - Tallying which value drivers are still low-confidence - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Business case is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/business-case.