Make the case to a CFO for funding a modernisation programme that nobody outside engineering can see.
A modernisation business case for a CFO turns technical debt into what finance already manages: run cost, risk exposure and speed of change. Price the status quo from stated assumptions, offer options with costs, fund in gated tranches with measures, and let finance decide how the spend is treated.
Answer
Short answer
Speak finance's language. A modernisation business case converts technical debt into three things a CFO already manages: what the current platform costs to run and change, what risk it carries, and how fast the business can change what it sells. Show the arithmetic from assumptions the CFO can attack, offer real options including doing nothing, and ask for money in tranches that each pay back on their own. Leave the accounting treatment to finance.
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Likely follow-ups
- The CFO accepts the case but funds only the first tranche. What do you deliver in it, and what evidence unlocks the second?
- Finance asks which engineers will leave the payroll once the change tax is gone. How do you answer without overpromising?
- Halfway through tranche two the measures stall. Do you ask for more money, re-plan, or stop, and how do you decide?
- How would the case change if the company were private-equity owned with a three-year exit horizon?
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