Project 62

Project no 62

Project Name

Change Management Roadmap and Business Case Standardization

Client

National Research Council of Canada | CIO branch

Duration

February 2026 to July 2026 [Delivery Based]

Project Description

Component 1 | Change Management Roadmap: Developed an Excel-based decision-support tool converting World Café pain points into a prioritized One Door roadmap supporting the reorganization of two groups under one CIO Branch. This delivered an IT solution for operational prioritization and organizational change planning.

Component 2 | Business Case Standardization: Standardized Business Case, Executive Summary and Cost Estimate development through an NRC AI-assisted platform linking initiative definition, benefits, funding guidance and cost estimation. The platform helped improve consistency in how initiatives were prepared, reviewed and advanced for approval. This supported a BI-style solution for structured decision-making and executive reporting.

Scope and objective

Component 1 – One Door roadmap: Converted World Café pain points into structured action items, classified them by theme, scored benefits, assessed people/process/technology implementation challenges, and consolidated results into eleven anchor actions across three opportunity areas with dependency logic toward the One Door outcome. This included evaluation and selection considerations for technology solutions, frameworks and platform options.

Component 2 – Business Case standardization: Standardized expectations for run, grow and transform IT investments, aligned guidance to maturity stages from Stage 0 Concept to Stage 3 Approval to Execute, and integrated funding logic, assumptions, cost-estimation principles and AI-assisted prompts. The scope also considered governance needs, review checkpoints, stakeholder adoption, and implementation readiness so that business case quality could improve over time. This addressed integration across business case content, funding data, cost-estimate inputs and reporting outputs.

Dollar Value

Information available withheld with client

Contribution of the proposed resource to the project

Built the Excel-based One Door analysis tool to transform stakeholder pain points into prioritized action items using benefit and implementation-challenge criteria. Applied AI-assisted analysis to classify actions, rationalize overlaps, support sequencing, and consolidate outputs into three opportunity areas, eleven anchor actions and visual dependency logic. This represented a practical IT solution supporting prioritization and change-management planning.

· Developed the standardized Business Case and Cost Estimate framework, including run/grow/transform classification, stage-based maturity guidance, funding guidance, cost-estimate assumptions, structured outputs and central dashboard concept. Designed the solution around a centralized Master Guidance mechanism so updates to guidance, assumptions and decision criteria could be applied consistently across in-flight Business Cases, reducing rework and improving alignment between initiative teams, finance inputs and executive reviewers. This included a BI-style platform approach for reporting, analysis and decision-making and integration logic across guidance, templates, assumptions and dashboard outputs. Clarified how cost-estimate detail, evidence, assumption maturity and governance expectations should increase through each stage to improve decision-readiness and executive consistency. The work also helped reduce variation in how initiatives were framed, compared and advanced for approval by giving teams a common structure for describing business need, value, risk, funding source, delivery readiness and implementation assumptions.

Deliverables

The deliverables include the following (but not limited to):

Component 1 – One Door roadmap and prioritization tool

· Excel-based One Door prioritization workbook converting World Café pain points into action items.

· Theme classification, benefit scoring and people/process/technology challenge assessment to compare and prioritize initiatives, including technology solution, framework and platform considerations used to assess implementation feasibility.

· Roadmap organized around three opportunity areas, eleven anchor actions, visual dependencies and a reusable change-management analysis tool.

Component 2 – Business Case, Executive Summary and Cost Estimate standardization

· Executive-level principles and guidance for Business Case and Cost Estimate development across run, grow and transform investments.

· Standardized initiative package, including Business Case, funding guidance, cost-estimate model, stage-based framework and AI-assisted dashboard concept, supporting a Business Intelligence-style solution for structured reporting and executive decision support.

· Centralized Master Guidance mechanism supporting consistent updates to new and/or “in-flight” Business Cases.

· Adaptive guidance linking maturity stage to required analysis depth, evidence quality, assumption confidence, cost-estimate detail and governance expectations.

· Integrated guidance, templates, funding inputs, cost-estimate assumptions and dashboard outputs into a repeatable structure, supporting integration across business case content, funding data, cost-estimate inputs and reporting outputs.

Cross-component outcome: The combined outputs created a practical decision-support foundation linking stakeholder input, prioritization, business justification, cost confidence, funding alignment and executive reporting. This improved consistency, transparency and traceability across CIO Branch planning and helped teams compare initiatives using clearer evidence and common decision criteria.

References:

National Research Council of Canada

Sandy Kyriakatos

Chief Information Officer

Telephone: 343-990-8088

email: Sandy.Kyriakatos@nrc.gc.ca

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Renée Venne

Chief Strategy

Telephone: 613-293-8167

email: Renee.Venne@nrc.gc.ca

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