Your first investment: thesis to gate

This is the tutorial that shows you what Tollgate is for. In one continuous pass you’ll charter an investment. You’ll write its thesis, draft the business case, give it a slice of scope, log a risk, and set its status. Then you’ll submit the business case for approval and approve the gate. At the end you’ll have a live, gated investment to present. On the way, you’ll meet the dashboard and most of the registers.

We’ll work on a sample project so you can experiment. Pick any software or business project you don’t mind filling with practice data, open its Tollgate tab, and follow along. Give yourself about fifteen minutes.

Note

This tutorial keeps you on the happy path — one clean run through, no detours. When you want the why behind a step, follow the links to the explanation pages. When you want every field and rule, follow the links to the reference. Don’t stop to read them now.

1. Write the investment thesis

The Business case register is where an investment earns its name. It answers “on track for what?” before anything else can.

1. Open the Business case card.
2. Write one clear sentence for each core field:
   • Business problem — what’s wrong today that justifies spending money.
   • Outcome — what “done and worth it” looks like.
   • Return expected — the payoff, in your own words, not a calculated number (see Does Tollgate calculate ROI?).
3. Name the Decision authority (sponsor) — the single person who can approve this investment.
4. Add the other governance seats: project manager, and optionally customer and supplier representatives.
5. Choose Save business case. Your thesis saves into Exploring, Discovery’s “thinking out loud” state.

Exploring commits you to nothing, so refine as much as you like.

Tip

Keep each sentence short enough to read aloud in a steering committee. A crisp thesis lets the sponsor grasp the investment in three sentences.

2. Draft the business case

Discovery is where a thesis gets pressure-tested before anyone commits to it. That’s what Exploring is for. When you’re ready to ask for a decision, move the case forward yourself. Tollgate doesn’t do this for you.

1. Scroll up to the Investment Health dashboard.
2. In the stage panel, choose Draft the business case. The business case moves from Exploring to Draft.

The panel may instead prompt you to fill a gap, such as Name the sponsor. Acting on that prompt takes the case to Draft too.

Draft is the state the case stays in while you finish scoping, risk and status ahead of a sponsor decision.

You could choose Close project here instead, with a short reason, and Tollgate would archive the case findably rather than deleting it. For this run, draft the business case and keep going.

3. Add a work package

A work package is a business-level slice of scope — “Checkout UX overhaul” or “Data migration” — not a Jira ticket. It’s how the sponsor’s view stays above the line.

1. Open the Work Packages card.
2. Add a work package and give it:
   • a Name and a named Owner,
   • Planned start and Planned end dates,
   • a Budget — the spend you’re asking for.
3. Save it. You now have one unit of scope with a cost and a schedule against it.

Forecast and actual budgets arrive later, when you edit the work package. Tollgate freezes the Approved plan baseline automatically when the sponsor approves.

You can link a work package to the Jira Epics that deliver it later — see Link a work package to a Jira issue. For your first pass, one un-linked work package is plenty.

4. Log a risk

Governance is partly about being honest about what could go wrong. The Risks & opportunities register holds risks (downside), opportunities (upside) and materialised items (risks that came true).

1. Open the Risks & opportunities card.
2. Add a risk with:
   • a Description and an Owner,
   • an Impact score (1–5) and a Likelihood score (1–5),
   • a treatment — one of Mitigate, Avoid, Transfer or Accept,
   • a short mitigation note.
3. Save. Tollgate sorts the register by impact × likelihood, so your most serious risks float to the top on their own.

Note

Tollgate always says Risk, never threat. If a risk comes true, you’ll route it to a decision rather than editing history. See Handle a materialised risk.

5. Set the status

Now tell Tollgate where the investment stands. This is the data that drives the dashboard you’ll present from.

1. Open the Investment Health dashboard (the top of the Tollgate tab).
2. On the Overall card, set the RAG: On track, At risk or Off track.
3. On the Confidence card, record how sure you are this will deliver what we funded.

Overall is the one status you set by hand. The Cost, Schedule and Scope cards complete themselves — you don’t set those. Your open risks feed the Confidence card. Tollgate derives them from the work packages, dates and risks you entered, so you can’t override them. Read the Investment Health dashboard explains each card in detail.

6. Submit the business case for approval

Your case is in Draft — thesis written, scoped, risked, and given a status. Time to put it in front of the sponsor.

1. Open the business case’s Adoption & Change section.
2. Complete its four required fields: who has to change behaviour, the adoption KPI, the adoption owner, and change saturation.
3. Choose Submit for approval — the primary action on the Investment Health stage panel. The state moves from Draft to Submitted.

The Adoption & Change quartet is one of the two things Tollgate genuinely requires before you proceed (the other is a named sponsor). It exists because adoption is the single best predictor of whether the investment lands. Once you submit, a Sponsor decision pending card appears on Investment Health.

Note

Only an editor can submit, and — in the next step — only the named sponsor can approve. That separation is deliberate: nobody approves their own case. See Roles, permissions & scopes.

7. Approve the gate

For this tutorial you’ll play the sponsor and approve your own case. (On a real investment this is a different person — that’s the whole point of the separation above.)

1. As the named decision authority, choose Review & decide on Investment Health (or open the Business case register).
2. Review the thesis, the work package, the risk and the status.
3. Approve — optionally adding a one-line rationale. The business case moves to Approved.

That’s the gate, and your investment is now chartered. It has a defined what, a slice of scope, a known risk, a status, and a sponsor’s name on the funding decision. All in one place, all current.

Tip

A sponsor doesn’t have to approve. They can choose Return with notes to send the case back for you to address. They can also archive it as “explored, not pursued” — a first-class outcome, recorded with the same care as an approval. See Return, reopen, or amend a business case.

What you’ve built

In one pass you moved an investment through the whole Commit act. It went from a hypothesis in Discovery, through a charter draft, to a chartered, gated investment. Everything the sponsor needs to interrogate it lives on this one surface, and none of it is a reassembled deck.

What’s next

• Read the Investment Health dashboard — understand every card on the surface you just filled.
• Present straight from the dashboard — run a steering committee off it.
• Curious why it’s shaped this way? Start with The SAM methodology.