Stakeholder brief
A workflow tool costs £60,000 implementation plus £12,000 annually. It could save 7 minutes on each of 1,200 monthly cases; loaded labor is £24/hour. Adoption may be 60–90%. A claimed £20,000 retention benefit lacks evidence.
Decision brief
Calculate gross and net annual value, simple payback and 3-year undiscounted ROI at both adoption levels. Separate cash savings from released capacity and propose a validation plan.
Deliverable template
Problem / evidence / assumptions: Options and tradeoffs: Recommendation and rationale: Decision owner / governance: Dependencies / risks / mitigations: Success measure / review date:
Worked example & tradeoffs
100% labor capacity value = 1,200×12×7/60×£24 = £40,320/year. At 60%: £24,192 gross, £12,192 net after license; payback ≈4.92 years, 3-year ROI ≈−39.04% using (3×net−60,000)/60,000. At 90%: £36,288 gross, £24,288 net; payback ≈2.47 years and ROI ≈21.44%. Timing, tax and discounting are excluded. Capacity is not cash unless redeployed or removed; exclude speculative retention from the base case.
One defensible approach. Your decision can differ if your evidence and tradeoffs support it.
Write the artifacts in your own words. Use identifiers to connect the objective, requirements and tests.