$30M Business Case Template for CTOs

Win Approval for Major Technology Projects Every Time

For most CTOs writing business cases for big projects is a nightmare.

That’s why I’m sharing my $30M business case template.

It will make your life 10x easier when it comes to selling a big technology project.

I’ve used this template over and over and it works perfectly with investors, Boards, CEOs and ELTs.

Why The Template Works

The reason this template works is because it gets 3 things right:

• The format

• The content

• The story

These are the 3 things most technology-driven business cases get wrong.

Today we’ll fix that.

Let’s dig in.

Format

This is where most tech leaders building a business case lose out, but where you can 100% win.

THE FORMAT OF THE BUSINESS CASE MATTERS A LOT.

I can’t stress it more.

Shi**y formatting = business case NOT approved.

So, what’s a good format?

It’s all about the right sections sequenced in the right order.

Get this right and you’ll make a massive impact on the audience regardless of the content.

Yes, that’s how important the format is — it’s almost more important than the content!

Why?

Because if people can’t digest your business case it doesn’t matter what’s in it.

My template calls for 10 key sections.

10 Key Sections

Business Headline
The one-line summary of the initiative that makes the business case feel obvious. This is your positioning line, treat it like a product headline NOT a technical one.

Key Benefits
What are the primary reasons you’re doing this? Choose the most critical benefits and make them land hard. Don’t list 50 things. Say the 2 or 3 things that matter most.

Return & Investment (ROI) Details
What do you expect to put in and what do you expect to get out of this in very clear terms? Be specific, even if the numbers are directional. Execs want to see you’ve thought it through.

Customer Impact
If the project touches end users or customers in any way, explain how. More usage, better NPS scores, more return customers — this section makes it real for the business side.

Technology Strategy
What are you actually doing under the hood? Explain the approach in a way that feels credible to non-technical leaders. Make it clear this is thought through.

Detailed Financials
Show the cost & payback numbers. Licensing, infrastructure, payroll — break it down simply. If you can estimate payback period or ROI, great. If not, show how this compares to status quo.

Strategic Risks
What could go wrong? What might slow you down? This is where you build trust by showing you’ve thought about the downside and have mitigation in mind.

Operating Model
Who’s doing the work? What team owns it? Are we using vendors or internal teams? Explain how the project will run and who’s accountable.

Success Metrics
What does “done well” look like? Show the top 3–5 metrics that matter — delivery speed, defect rate, cost savings, whatever is most relevant. Bonus points if they’re already tracked.

Long Term Unlocks
What long-term value does this initiative create? This is where you show execs that you’re not just solving today’s problem you’re setting the company up for what comes next.

Sequencing the Sections

The above sequence is what I use the most often.

However, sometimes I change the order of sections depending on what kind of message I’m trying to convey or who my audience is.

Typically I always keep the “Long-Term Unlock” section towards the end to really bring things home & leave a final positive impact in the mind of the audience.

This is critical for technology business cases that are inherently challenging to explain to a non-technical audience.

I always keep the “Business Headline” and “Key Benefit” sections as my first and second sections. Those are vital for starting off the business case right.

The rest of the sections are malleable & you can adjust them as needed.

Content

Now that you nailed the format it’s time for the content.

Technology business cases are easy if you know the type of content that goes in them.

Stop thinking about business cases as if you’re starting from scratch.

Remember, 99% of business cases have already been seen before by investors, Boards, etc.

So this is an assembly job.

Start thinking about business cases as populating a template, not writing beautiful words.

If you have to come up with beautiful words you’re doing it wrong. And chances are your business case won’t land well because you’re not exactly Shakespeare.

Let’s go through section by section so you can see how exactly to populate the template.

Business Headline Section

This section of the business case is highly specific to your situation. But at the core it is about framing technical concepts in business terms.

The best way to learn this is through examples.

This is from a real business case that I was able to get approved for $5M.

Here was the original headline someone else wrote and then handed to me:

Kubernetes Migration Initiative
“Re-architect the current infrastructure by implementing Kubernetes clusters across all environments to modernize our container orchestration approach, streamline DevOps workflows, and ensure compatibility with cloud-native tooling.”

This is a terrible headline…but too many technology leaders think it’s perfectly fine.

What makes it bad is that a business audience won’t understand it.

They won’t see the value. There is too much meaningless technical jargon.

Instead, I changed it to this and won approval for it:

Product Efficiency Project
“Modernize the AWS infrastructure that supports our flagship product in order to reduce cloud spend by $1.2M annually, improve deployment frequency by 60%, and cut customer-facing downtime by 90% — without increasing headcount.

Not one word about Kubernetes or migrations!

Here’s why it works.

• People understand “Product” - they don’t understand “Kubernetes.”

• People understand “Efficiency” - they don’t understand “Migration.”

• I changed the headline to include numbers which people understand more easily: e.g. “reduce cloud spend by $1.2M…”

• I reduced the technical jargon → business people know AWS, they don’t know Kubernetes

• I made a comparison to bring it home & leave an impression, e.g. “without increasing headcount”…that’s powerful

If you try very hard and still can’t write a good headline for your business case maybe your business case is not very good.

It can also sometimes mean that you actually have two business cases that you’re trying to cram into one.

Key Benefits Section

There are a finite set of benefits a business can get out of a technology project.

Not enough leaders understand that.

It goes back to the idea of thinking you have to write something unique or beauitful.

You don’t.

Leaders think they have to tell a magical story of how the project will change the world.

It’s unnecessary and nobody believes that stuff anyway.

Instead, just memorize the 1st order benefits list below — it’s not that long.

Then map your project to this list of benefits.

1st Order Benefits

• Enables More Sales

• Increases Operational Efficiency

• Improves NPS / Customer Happiness

• Allows Expansion to New Markets

• Decreases Product Time-to-Market

• Fewer Bugs / Defects

• Lowers Cost

• Improves Deliverability

• System Performance - Increase to Uptime

• System Performance - Faster Responsiveness

• Security - Less Risk of Issues

• Compliance - Regulatory Compliance More Likely / Guaranteed

• Legal - Ensure’s you’re complying with a Federal or State law

• Enables an Integration with a Partner or 3rd Party

• Get Investors to Put In Money

These are 15 of the most popular 1st order benefits.

There are between 50 to 75 2nd order benefits. (Yes, I counted. It varies depending on how you frame the benefit).

Don’t worry about 2nd order benefits because they are not key benefits!

Another thing: 2nd order benefits sound good on paper but in reality are often hard to measure & that’s another reason to not include them in this section.

Focus on 1st order benefits only and the 2nd order benefits can be addressed later.

Return & Investment Details Section

So you’ve hit the audience with a powerful business headline and you’ve followed that up with a compelling & clear set of standardized benefits they can expect from the project.

Now you have to scare the audience a little bit. 👻

Not literally but conceptually.

What I mean is that you have to re-explain the RETURN (benefits) in the CONTEXT of the INVESTMENT (cost).

The investment side might be a little scary to the audience.

But you have to marry up both sides to make the business case realistic & not fake BS for the stakeholders making the decision.

The people making the decision KNOW a price must be paid.

If you marry things up well the audience will understand clearly the TRADEOFFS & their decision will be easier.

Again, there are NOT an infinite number of investment types. The investment list is finite.

Here are the possible investments in a technical project.

• Money
  One-time costs, recurring spend, tooling, licensing, vendor fees. This is the most obvious one and usually the scariest if you don’t frame it well.

• People
  You’ll need headcount. Maybe it's existing teams, maybe you need to hire. Maybe you need outside help. Either way, someone has to do the work.

• Time
  This is critical. How long will it take to implement and then start seeing impact? Time-to-value is often the biggest reason a technical project gets rejected.

Take the benefits list and these 3 investment types and put them SIDE-BY-SIDE.

You have to put them side-by-side on the page, literally.

This forms a connection in the mind of the audience b/w what you’ll put in (cost) and what you’ll get out (benefits).

Explain each benefit and investment/cost in reasonable detail.

💡 At this point you’ve gotten the audience super excited with the 1st 2 sections and then you’ve balanced their expectations out & made things realistic with this section.

Customer Impact Section

Why are we all in business? Because of customers.

Tech leaders think there are many technology projects that have no customer impact.

The truth is there are very few.

Even if you’re cleaning up technical debt you have to try to trace it to customer impact.

If you analyze things and your project has 0 true customer impact then making a compelling business case for it becomes 10x more difficult.

So this is an important piece of the business case to figure out right.

Here is your list of all possible customer impacts:

• Happier with the product (NPS, etc)

• Less churn (turnover)

• Fewer complaints/tickets (different from the first one)

• More trust in the product / brand

• Easier to upsell / cross-sell

• Faster adoption of new features

• Better user experience

• More referrals or positive word-of-mouth

• Less concern about outages, data loss, or performance issues

Choose from this list and describe each customer impact in some detail but don’t take it overboard.

Technology Strategy Section

Keep this section as simple as possible. Don’t get bogged down in detailed technical jargon or architecture.

This section is similar to the business headlines section — you have to turn technical detail into business terminology so people understand it.

Here are a set of options to use to describe your technology strategy.

Build vs. Buy vs. Partner

• We will build it in-house

• We will build it, but with a 3rd parties help

• We will buy it

• We will partner with someone for it

• We will do a mixture of all 4

If there is some need to describe a more detailed technical approach then you can use the following categories.

Technical Approach Categories

• Integration — connecting existing systems

• Migration — moving data or functionality to a new platform

• Consolidation — reducing multiple tools or systems into one

• Modernization — upgrading legacy tech without replacing everything

• Automation — replacing manual processes with code or workflows

• Modularity — breaking systems into smaller, independent pieces

• Standardization — using shared patterns, tools, or frameworks

• Replacement — ripping out something old and putting in something new

• Enablement — adding APIs, SDKs, or tooling to support growth

• Scaling — increasing capacity, throughput, or performance

• Optimization — making the system faster, cheaper, or more stable

• Replatforming — moving from one core system to another

• Decoupling — removing tight dependencies to gain flexibility

• Securitization — improving the security controls & reducing risk

Notice that we’re still avoiding the nitty gritty architectural details while still explaining the entire technology strategy to a business audience.

These people will generally understand the above terminology.

You want to avoid detailed technical architectures in a business case unless the audience specifically asks for it.

Detailed Financials Section

Now that you’ve outlined the technology strategy, you need to show the numbers on the business case.

This section is the heart of the business case. ❤️

In this section you’re showing the financials on both the return (benefits) side and investment (cost) side.

No business case feels real without this section.

Let’s start with the cost side because that’s typicaly quite easy.

Typical Cost Categories

• People

• Infrastructure

• Tooling

• Licensing

• Consultants

• Training

• Change Management

• Transition / Dual Run Periods

• Contingencies

You don’t want a massively complex spreadsheet but something simple and clear.

And you don’t need exact dollar amounts down to the penny — but you do need the right categories and directional numbers that are believable.

OK, now let’s talk about the return side.

This is much, much harder because you’re predicting the future.

And it’s where most technology leaders struggle — not because they don’t know what the project does, but because they don’t know how to express payback and benefits in financial terms.

Here’s a list of different types of payback — all of which tie back to the 1st order benefits described earlier.

You don’t have to address all of these in this section. Just the payback types that connect to your 1st order benefits.

Strategic Risks Section

This is the section where you build critical trust with the audience.

Not by saying everything is safe but by showing that you’ve actually thought through what could go wrong.

Every business case has risk. If you pretend there isn’t any, your credibility drops fast.

So in this section, call out the real risks. Keep them high-level. Don’t overdo it, but don’t skip the uncomfortable stuff either.

Key Types of Risks in Technology Projects

• Adoption – The solution may not be used/leveraged at the rate expected.

• Change Management – The initiative may be disruptive or poorly absorbed.

• Competitive – Rivals may move faster or undercut your advantage.

• Cross-Functional – Misalignment across teams may slow or block progress.

• Customer Retention – Project may negatively impact customers.

• Data – Data may be missing, low quality, or hard to access.

• Dependencies – Success relies on external teams, vendors, or systems.

• Market Changes – External shifts could make the effort less relevant.

• Organizational Maturity – The org may not be ready (skills) to execute on the project.

• People Retention – Key talent may leave before or during execution.

• Product – Product strategy may shift midstream.

• Regulatory / Compliance – You may create exposure.

• Technical Execution – Complexity, poor planning or unknowns may derail the effort.

• Technology Innovation – Emerging tech may leapfrog what you’re building.

You don’t have to address all of these in this section. Just capture the ones that matter and describe how you’re mitigating them.

Operating Model Section

OK, let’s talk about operating models.

This is where you tell the audience more about how you’ll set up the organization to get the project done.

You’ve already told them what you’re doing and why — now you need to explain who’s doing it, how it’ll run, and who’s accountable.

You’re answering the unspoken question: “Can this team actually pull this off?”

Here’s what to include:

• Ownership — Who owns this project? One person? One team?

• Team Structure — Will this be done by an internal squad? A cross-functional tiger team? A vendor? Spell it out.

• Delivery Model — Agile? Waterfall? Hybrid? Phased rollout? Just give them a sense of how the work will flow.

• Resourcing Plan — Are you using existing staff? Hiring? Using contractors or partners? Mention it at a high level.

• Governance — Who makes decisions when things go sideways? What’s the escalation path?

• Reporting / Visibility — How will progress be tracked and shared with stakeholders? Weekly updates? Milestone reviews?

You don’t need to go into deep PMO detail — just show that there’s a solid, realistic plan to run this project properly.

If your operating model is unclear, even the best strategy will fall apart.

Success Metrics Section

Now you need to show the audience how precisely you’ll measure success using metrics.

This isn’t just about project completion, remember it’s about business results.

You’re answering the question: “How will we know this worked?”

And you’re using numbers to do it.

This section builds confidence because it shows you’re thinking about concrete provable outcomes using evidence.

Here’s what to include:

• Key Metrics — Pick 3 to 5. Keep it tight. Focus on what actually matters to the business.

• Mix of leading and lagging — Leading = inputs (e.g. deployment frequency). Lagging = results (e.g. cost savings).

• Make them measurable — If it can’t be tracked, it doesn’t count. “Improve collaboration” isn’t a metric. “Reduce cycle time by 20%” is.

• Include a baseline if you have it — This helps people understand how big the impact could be.

Let’s look at specific types of metrics tied to the 1st order metrics:

You don’t need to make a complex dashboard for the business, case but it helps to have your mappings down as noted above in the table.

Long-Term Unlocks Section

If possible a strong business case should show how the project delivers future leverage — not just short-term benefits.

This section isn’t about immediate ROI. It’s about what the company will be able to do after the project is complete that it can’t do today.

It’s what makes this investment strategic, not just tactical.

Pick the ones that truly apply to your project. Say them clearly. Keep it crisp.

• Enable new pricing models (e.g. usage-based)

• Expansion into new markets or regions

• More M&A opportunity

• Accelerate future product development

• Improve cross-team alignment

• Reduce long-term operational costs

• Enable AI, analytics, or automation

• Improve scalability

• Strengthen security and compliance posture

• Support future fundraising

• Help retain engineering talent

Don’t exaggerate here.

You only want to put real, achievable things in this section.

But these are long term items so you’re definitely doing a little guesswork & prediction here.

Just don’t exaggerate.

Story

If you’ve gotten the format and the content right, then the final piece of the puzzle is the story.

The story is the script you need to sell the business case to the audience.

The script is the set of talking points that goes hand-in-hand with the business case when you’re presenting it.

The talking points do not go word for word with what’s in the business case.

You don’t want that — otherwise you’re just reading the business case and the audience can do that on their own.

You’re marketing the business case, which is different.

What you want is a script that tells a compelling story that captures the interest and attention of the audience beyond what a business case itself can do.

I can’t give you the exact script you should use because each project is different, but I can give you the outline / structure of what I use.

This script outline has gotten me anywhere from $1M business case approval up to $30M with no issues whatsoever.

It truly, crushes. And the funny thing is that it’s so simple.

When an audience hears this script while they are looking at the business case at the same time, its a very powerful, almost undeniable combination.

Story / Script Outline

Start with the problem.
Make the pain real. What’s slowing the business down, costing money, or creating risk? State it clearly.

Describe the future state.
Lay out the future state in simple business terms. Don’t sell the tech. Paint the end state picture beautifully and capture the audience imagination. Make them feel like you’ll make the pain go away.

Explain the journey.
How’re you going to get from pain to the future/end state? What are the actual project details? How is it going to go? Describe the journey as necessary, positive and doable.

Show what the business gets.
Talk about the return on investment (ROI). What outcomes are we buying? Be sharp. Say the words they care about. This is where you really strike to the heart of the audience and what they’ll get out of it very specifically.

Call out the costs & risks.
Combining these two areas works well. This is the expensive stuff and the scary stuff. Remember you’re building trust in your business case here because you’re being realistic. But don’t make things up to scare people either. Be real with the risks.

Remind them why now.
There’s always a forcing function. Tie it to timing. Momentum. Opportunity cost, etc. Make sure that the audience believes you’re doing this project for a reason. This is where you remind them of the reason that you may have mentioned in the 1st problem phase of the script.

End with confidence.
Not hype. Confidence. "This is the right time, the right team, and the right move for the business." You have to have a fantastic ending. This is where you wordsmith and make it sound good and compelling.

Use this script structure and it works every time in board rooms, ELT conversations, etc.

Weave the script in with the format & content.

It works every time 😀

Closing Thoughts

You now have a business case template that you can customize for small to large business cases up to $30M.

Beyond that size I’ve noticed things start to change and other sections have to be added and considered strongly.

That’s a different kind of template for another time.

In the meantime, remember that a business case is a giant prediction. And no one including you can predict the future.

So you have to have BALANCE in a business case. You can’t paint an overly rosy picture, nor can you paint a picture that’s too bleak.

OK, if you need help building a business case just email me at bobby@technocratic.io.

In the meantime, keep the shark swimming. 🦈