This case study summarises a quantitative range analysis of the possible costs associated with each of two options for the procurement of an Asset Management and Maintenance System. The client who was considering the system acquisition operated an asset-based utility business.

This was not as straightforward as the usual analyses we conduct to support this kind of decision:

• Due to the complexity of the requirement and its intimate interaction with business operations, the team was committed to an agile development approach, fixing the total cost and delivering as much scope as possible within that agreed budget
• The team wanted to package the risks in a particular way, using a ‘parent risk’ concept (similar in many ways to the ‘headline risk’ approach we often use to simplify a long list of specific risks), which reflected both the way that funding was being managed and the contractual arrangement foreshadowed in the procurement documentation.

The case demonstrates a straightforward quantitative approach to comparing options. It generated far more insight than could be obtained from a simple comparison of the initial quotes from software vendors and the analysis stimulated intense discussion among senior project team members that resolved several misunderstandings and helped to develop a level of shared understanding that had not existed prior to the analysis.

The full case study is available here.