Satire
The Budget That Was Approved in Q1 and Released in Q4
The money exists. It was approved. It is simply not available yet.
The business case took four months to write. The presentation went well. The investment committee approved the budget in March.
The team starts planning the implementation.
What Actually Happens
The approved budget requires a Finance drawdown request, submitted to the cost centre owner, reviewed by the PMO, approved by the CFO's office, and reflected in the next planning cycle. The next planning cycle closes in Q3. The Q3 drawdown is reflected in the finance system in October. It is now October. The vendor has revised their pricing. The team that was going to implement it has been partially redeployed. One engineer has left. The technology the business case described is now at version 2, which has a different licensing model, which requires a revised business case.
The revised business case is estimated at six weeks.
“The cost of delayed technology acquisition compounded over nine months exceeds the annual cost of the technology itself. I have a spreadsheet. Nobody has asked to see it.”
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Let's talk architecture →How a Builder Should Respond
You start the drawdown process the same week the investment is approved — not after the plan is finished. Budget approval and budget availability are different events with different timelines; you treat them that way from day one. Before the business case is even written, you map the finance cycle dates and build them into the delivery plan. If the procurement window is going to miss the delivery window, you surface that mismatch in writing to the programme sponsor while there is still time to adjust — not after the delay has already happened.
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