You have assessed the benefits, costs, feasibility, risks and issues associated with each alternative solution. Now you can complete the following steps to rank the alternative solutions and recommend a preferred solution.

Rate the Alternative Solutions

List the assessment criteria required to rate your alternative solutions and identify a rating mechanism to calculate a total score. You may wish to either apply a simple rating mechanism by assigning a score from 1-10 unweighted or the Quick PM Docs approach whereby you weight certain criteria that are more important in making the final decision. You can fill the Business Case table to help you summarize the ratings given to each alternative solution.

  • Assessment Criteria
    • List the criteria used to rate each of the alternative solutions. Examples include: benefits gained, cost of the solution, level of feasibility, inherent risks and size of issues
  • Criteria Rating (Weight)
    • For each criterion, rate its importance to meeting the project requirements. You will be saying that some criteria are more important than others. For example, you may care more about profitability than having expansion space at this location
  • Solution Rating
    • For each solution, rate its ability to satisfy each criterion
    • The result is a grid of criteria and solutions
  • Calculate a Combined Score for Each Solution
    • By either multiplying or adding the solution and criteria rates, a combined score for each solution is obtained. This is called a weighted rating.

Identify the Recommended Solution

The solution with the highest score in the table above becomes your preferred solution for implementation. Identify your preferred solution in your Business Case document, and state the primary reasons why this solution was chosen over the other alternatives available. The process should have already revealed to you which solution is best. If the top score doesn’t feel right, check your work. A common error is to list several criteria that are practically the same thing, with the result that this criterion becomes over-weighted.

Identify the Alternative Solutions The Implementation Approach