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Better Business Cases™ (BBC) Foundation & Practitioner Course

The Better Business Cases™ (BBC) Combined course blends our Foundation course and Practitioner course. Each participant is first provided with a solid Foundation in BBC concepts and is then advanced to a Practitioner understanding of how to apply BBC guidance in practice

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The Foundation Course

The Better Business Cases™ (BBC) approach is structured around the UK Five Cases Model, which provides a disciplined, step-by-step approach to the development of a robust investment proposal.

The foundation course will cover the following topics:

Help you understand the philosophy and underlying rationale of the Five Case Model, as well as the structure and key terminology of the model

Help you understand the different types of business case, their purpose, who is responsible for them and when they are required in the development of a spending proposal

Enable the development of the business case in relation to other recognized and recommended best practice for programme and project management

Help you understand the approaches to implementation and the factors to consider in sustaining progress

The Practitioner Seminar

The Practitioner Course will ensure that you achieve sufficient understanding of the theory and application of the Five Case Model to allow them to effectively develop and produce a business case

The Practitioner Seminar will cover the following topics:

Ensure that you achieve sufficient understanding of the theory and application of the Five Case Model to allow them to effectively develop and produce a business case

Enable you to apply and understand how to tailor the Five Case Model effectively to the development of a business case within an organization environment supporting the approach

Help you understand the development lifecycle of a business case and the relationships between the five cases

Help you apply the steps in the business case development framework, in order to support the production of a business case, using the Five Case Model, for a given scenario

Who should enroll?

This BBC™ Combined Certification course is designed for those leading, managing, and supporting an organizational investment change initiative, such as:

Those overseeing, a project or investment to understand the work that is necessary to prove a case for investment

Senior Responsible Officers (SROs), Senior Managers and Executives, Investment Portfolio Managers, Investment Advisers, Business Consultants

Programme Directors and Project Managers, with responsibility for the successful delivery of programmes and projects

Directors of Finance, Procurement and Planning, with responsibility for the forward planning of operational aspects of a proposal

Members of the Management Board (Chairman, non-executives, the CEO and other directors), with strategic responsibility for approving proposals throughout their life span.

Anyone wishing to round out their resume with a formal internationally recognised business case certification.

This course will

Help you understand the different types of business cases, their purpose, who is responsible for them and when they are required in the development of a spending (investment) proposal

Ensure that you achieve a sufficient understanding of the theory and application of the Five Case Model to allow them to effectively develop and produce a business case

Enable you to apply and understand how to tailor the Five Case Model effectively to the development of a business case within an organization environment supporting the approach

Help you understand the approaches to implementation and the factors to consider in sustaining the progress of the spending (investment) proposal

Students will be fully prepared for the Foundation and Practitioner exams

Pre-requisites

There are no prerequisites for the course, however some exposure to business cases would be useful.

Candidates for the Practitioner exam must have already passed the Foundation exam.

Course content

The foundation course will cover the following topics:

The terms and concepts relating to the Five Case Model

How the Strategic Case is developed; the steps and the responsibilities involved

How the Economic Case is developed; the steps and the responsibilities involved

The terms and concepts of the Commercial Case

The terms and concepts of the Financial Case

The terms and concepts of the Management Case

Purpose of the key stages in the development and delivery of a spending proposal

Purpose of a Strategic Outline Programme Case and in what circumstances it should be considered

Purpose of a Business Justification Case and in what circumstances it should be considered

Purpose of a Strategic Outline Case

Purpose of an Outline Business Case

Responsibilities for the business planning process

Relationship with best practice programme and project management methodologies

Relationship between policies, strategies, programmes and projects and their deliverables

Course Outline

Information Sessions
  • About the course
  • About the exams
  • Contact and Support
  • Tour of the eLearning interface
Foundation Exam Preparation
  • How to prepare for the Practitioner Exam
  • Foundation Exam simulator
Foundation Course Modules
  • The Context of Business Cases
  • Overview of BBC™
  • The Five Cases Model
  • Types of Business Cases
  • The Business Case Development Lifecycle
  • The Options Framework
  • Strategic Assessment
  • Scoping a Scheme
  • Planning a Scheme
  • Procuring a Scheme
  • Applying BBC to Programmes
  • Course closure
Practitioner Course Modules
  • Practitioner Seminar
Practitioner Exam Preparation
  • How to prepare for the Practitioner Exam
  • How to use the sample Practitioner Exams
Professional Development

Successful completion of this course may entitle you to credits in various professional development programmes:

Certification Exams

The Foundation Exam is a 40-minute closed-book multiple-choice exam. You must get at least 25 of the 50 questions correct to pass.

The Practitioner Exam is a 2½ hour objective testing exam. You will be able to access the ‘Delivering Public Value From Spending Proposals’ guide during the exam but will have access to no other material. There will be 4 questions and 80 question items, each worth 1 mark for a total of 80 marks. You must get at least 40 of the 80 question items correct to pass. The questions will be presented in the following styles:

  • Classical multiple choice
  • Yes/No
  • Multiple responses
  • Matching
  • Sequencing
  • Assertion/Reason

Candidates for the Practitioner Exam must have already passed the Foundation Exam.

The examinations are conducted by APMG, subject to their terms and conditions.

EZY Skills will book your examinations with APMG. APMG will then contact you by email and ask you to register in their candidate system. They will also let you know how to schedule the date and time you wish to take your examinations.

Your course fee allows for a “one-time” sitting at each of the examinations. Please be aware that if you schedule an examination with APMG but do not take that examination as scheduled, APMG will charge you an additional fee for the examination. You cannot reschedule a missed examination until this additional fee has been paid.

Reference Manual

Each Practitioner course makes frequent references to sections in the relevant reference manual. In addition, a Practitioner exam candidate is permitted to access the reference manual during the exam; in fact, the examiner expects that the candidate does have access. So EZY Skills strongly recommends that the candidate print out the supplied reference manual to use during the exam.

The official reference manual that is supplied as part of this course may be used during the practitioner exam. The official manual may be annotated and tabulated but no sticky notes and loose leaf papers containing additional notes will be allowed to be accessed in the Practitioner examination.

A certification course does not cover all of the content in the corresponding reference manual. Delegates would find that having access to a copy of the reference manual in the workplace after the course would be an invaluable resource. Most people find that the level of knowledge required to pass a certification exam is somewhat lower than required to actually apply the material just learned in the workplace. Even people with a great deal of experience using the material find that there are occasions when access to the reference manual is necessary.

Delivery Timeframe

Delivery times for hardcopy reference manuals are currently much longer than normal. Students are advised not to schedule their Practitioner exam in advance of receipt of any reference manual they may have ordered.

Total Cost

$1,199.00

Includes the AMPG Certification Examination Fee

This course will

Ensure that you achieve sufficient understanding of the theory and application of the Five Case Model to allow you to effectively develop and produce a business case

Enable you to apply and understand how to tailor the Five Case Model effectively to the development of a business case within an organization environment supporting the approach

Help you understand the development lifecycle of a business case and the relationships between the five cases

Help you apply the steps in the business case development framework, in order to support the production of a business case, using the Five Case Model, for a given scenario

Students will be fully prepared for the Foundation & Pracitioner exams

Follow-on Courses

We recommend that students who complete this course should proceed with one of our Project Management courses.