Quiz: How Well Do You Understand Business Cases on Resource-Constrained Construction Projects?
A six-question retrospective for delivery managers running enterprise hardware or construction projects — testing whether your business case withstood the resource scarcity that always shows up.
Most construction business cases survive the budget review and not the bottleneck
Every enterprise construction project has one specialist who is the bottleneck for everyone. The question is whether your business case admitted it.
Enterprise construction projects rarely fail at the procurement stage. They fail at the resource scarcity pattern — the moment when one specialist or one piece of equipment becomes the limiting factor for the whole program. The business case that didn't account for this is the one being rewritten in week 14.
This short retrospective is for delivery managers who've completed at least one enterprise hardware or construction project. Answer each question against your last business case. Your tier appears at the foot — no data leaves the browser.
Did your business case name the single most-constrained resource by role or by individual — not by department?
Did your business case quantify how many other projects share that resource during your delivery window?
Did the business case include a contingency cost for resource conflict — overtime, contract help, or descope?
Was there a named decision-maker for resource conflicts, with authority to reassign across projects?
Did the business case identify a backup specialist or supplier for the constrained resource?
Did the business case schedule resource-intensive work at a time the resource was *demonstrably* available — not just nominally available?
| Section | Budget-document business case | Resource-honest business case |
|---|---|---|
| Length of cost section | 3–5 pages | 3–5 pages |
| Length of resource section | Half a page or absent | At least as long as the cost section |
| Names individuals | No | Yes |
| Backup specialist or supplier | Not identified | Named, availability confirmed |
| Cross-project conflict resolution | Implicit escalation | Named decision-maker, cross-project authority |
| Contingency for resource conflict | Generic 10% buffer or absent | Line-itemed against specific scenarios |
- After scoringMark the gapsIdentify which questions you answered no, and what specifically went wrong on the project as a result.
- Within a weekUpdate the templateAdd a resource section to your standard business case template that explicitly addresses any 'no' answers you scored.
- Next projectTest the changeOn the next initiation, write the resource section first. If the business case can't pass it, the project isn't ready.
The point of this retrospective isn't to grade your past project — it's to surface whether the business case format your organization uses has a structural blind spot for resource scarcity. Most do. The fix is one new section, used consistently, until the people who write business cases internalize the questions. For the same kind of structural blind-spot review on a different pattern, see the priority-collision checklist and the twelve common mistakes article.
Your result
0 of 6 answeredPick an answer for every question above to see your result.