Research Methodology

Analysis was used to explore the concept of the business case and to summarise the findings of the literature reviewed, the following processes were used:

1.-The sources of competitive advantage; differentiation; the environment; competitors; strengths and weaknesses; market segmentation; the dynamics of product; market evolution; a portfolio of products and markets; setting clear strategic priorities and sticking to them; customer orientation; being professional; and giving leadership.
2.- Create a list of key search terms, key terms are derived from the research topic and include synonyms.
3.- Identify the source for primary searches, the identification of relevant articles was carried out using online databases such as Scopus.com, IEEE Xplore and Google Scholar.
4.-Inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed to narrow the number of research articles, that is: Articles that are specific to the business case, much of the literature reviewed comes from backward reference searches, and scans of recent years of journals like the Project Management Journal and the International Journal of Project Management.
5.-Articles on themes related to the business case like project governance and knowledge management.
6.-Articles that merely use the term ‘business case’ as a synonym for ‘justification’, such as ‘the business case for nursing training’, were not used.
7.- A coding frame was used to categorise and analyse the results of the selected performance criteria adopted in this research, which were later used to conceptualise the various themes related to the business case, iustrates the themes, and shows that ‘business case processes’ and ‘business case information needs’ are close to the core.
8.-Each theme is assigned a unique ‘theme tag’ in the reference manager tool, which is used to search for relevant papers during the writing on a particular topic. The main tags used for this article are ‘PROCCT’ – processes to create and track the business case – and ‘INFOCR, INFOTR’ – information to create and track the business case. Each tag may be used multiple times for a particular article. Thus, each selected idea has a tag, and article page number, in the ‘Research Notes’ section of the reference manager tool. When writing about business case information, it is possible to seek relevant ideas, even where articles cover several themes. Such references contribute to Tables 1–3, which
outline business case information, and to corresponding Tables 1-A1–3-A1 in Appendix 1, which also give the source and use of each information type, as well as at least one reference.
9.-Some judgement is used as to the level of detail, for example,‘Enterprise Environmental Factors’ is treated as a single information type, even though it could potentially break down into multiple information types, depending on the project.
10.-Having extracted the information types, they are mapped, against the business case content elements derived from reference texts, to give some assurance that nothing important has been overlooked.