Canonical page: https://tellenze.com/help/business-cases

# Connect delivery to a Business Case

Define expected value and costs, link contributing work, and record measurable outcomes.

## Connect delivery to a measurable benefit

A Business Case is a work type for the value an initiative is expected to produce. It lives in a Project or Team and uses that owner’s workflow, assignments, discussion, and access. Related implementation work can contribute to it without becoming its child.

Use it when you want to compare an expected benefit with observed results. For example, “Reduce invoice support effort” can describe a measurable reduction in handling time over a defined period, supported by several delivery tasks.

## Create a forecast

1. Open the owning Project or Team and choose **New task**.
2. Expand **Work type** and select **Business Case**.
3. Add the context and acceptance criteria. Explain how you derived the estimate and where the measurement will come from.
4. In **Business value · EUR**, record **Estimated impact**, **Estimated cost**, **Benefit period start**, **Benefit period end**, and a **Measurable success criterion**.
5. Create the item. To revise values later, open **Definition**, update the Business value fields, and choose **Save business values**.

Amounts use EUR with up to two decimal places. Enter a plain number such as `12000.00`; do not include a currency symbol or thousands separator. Impact means value before separately recorded costs. Costs cannot be negative; impact can be negative. Leave unknown amounts blank instead of entering zero.

For an illustrative case, estimated impact of EUR 12,000 and estimated cost of EUR 3,000 produce estimated net value of EUR 9,000. A suitable criterion could be “Reduce median handling time from 20 to 10 minutes during the October–December benefit period.” The dates describe when the benefit is measured, while the work item’s due date describes its delivery deadline.

## Link contributing work and evidence

Open a contributing item’s **Related work** section and choose **Add relation → contributes to Business Case**. Search for an accessible Business Case and save the relation. Multiple items can contribute to one case, and an item can contribute to several cases.

Contribution links express the connection. They do not copy money fields, calculate the benefit from child-task estimates, or transfer ownership. Keep the assumptions and measurements on the Business Case and use **Outcome documents** for the evidence. A relation also leaves source permissions intact.

## Finish delivery and record actual results

You can create an incomplete draft, but completing a Business Case requires both forecast amounts, both benefit-period dates, and the measurable success criterion. The period must end on or after its start. If completion fails, finish those fields, save, and retry the workflow move.

Actual impact and actual cost can remain unknown when delivery completes. Record them once you have measured the result. Updating actual values on an unarchived completed case preserves its completion state and does not require reopening the work.

The editor displays estimated and actual net value as impact minus cost. If either amount is unknown, the corresponding net remains **Unknown**. A measured zero and an unknown value communicate different results.

## Keep the record meaningful

Do not erase required forecast fields after completion. Preserve the original expectation and explain material changes through context, conversation, and evidence so a later review can compare expectations with results.

Remove active incoming contribution links before changing a Business Case to another work type. Archived cases and cases in archived owners are read-only. A template can carry forecast assumptions into a new case, while actual results belong to the newly measured outcome.