Your first investment: thesis to gate

This tutorial shows what Tollgate is for. In one pass you charter an investment. You write its thesis, draft the business case, add a slice of scope, log a risk and set its status. Then you submit the business case for approval and approve the gate. You finish with a live, gated investment to present, and you meet the dashboard and most of the registers on the way.

Work on a sample project. Pick any software or business project you don’t mind filling with practice data, open its Tollgate tab, and follow along. Allow about fifteen minutes.

Note

This tutorial uses Advanced mode, which has a business case and gates. From v6.7.0, new projects start in Standard, which has neither. To follow along, open Project settings on your practice project and switch it to Advanced. See Key concepts.

Note

This tutorial stays on the happy path, with no detours. For the why behind a step, follow the links to the explanation pages. For every field and rule, follow the links to the reference. Skip them on the first pass.

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 it freely.

Tip

Keep each sentence short enough to read aloud in a steering committee. With a crisp thesis, the sponsor grasps 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 it for you.

1. Scroll up to the 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.

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

You could choose Close project here instead, with a short reason. Tollgate archives the case, findable, and does not delete 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, such as Checkout UX overhaul or Data migration. It is not a Jira ticket. It keeps the sponsor’s view 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.

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. One unlinked work package is enough for your first pass.

4. Log a risk

Governance means 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: Mitigate, Avoid, Transfer or Accept,
   • a short mitigation note.
3. Save. Tollgate sorts the register by impact × likelihood, so your most serious risks rise to the top.

Note

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

5. Set the status

Tell Tollgate where the investment stands. This data drives the dashboard you present from.

1. Open the 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 that this will deliver what you funded.

Overall is the one status you set by hand. Tollgate derives the Cost, Schedule and Scope cards from the work packages and dates you entered, so you can’t override them. Your open risks feed the Confidence card. Read the dashboard explains each card.

6. Submit the business case for approval

Your case is in Draft: thesis written, scoped, risked and given a status. 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 dashboard’s stage panel. The state moves from Draft to Submitted.

Tollgate requires two things before you proceed: a named sponsor and the Adoption & Change fields. It asks for adoption because adoption is the best predictor of whether the investment lands. Once you submit, a Sponsor decision pending card appears on the dashboard.

Note

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

7. Approve the gate

For this tutorial, play the sponsor and approve your own case. On a real investment a different person approves it. That is the point of the separation above.

1. As the named decision authority, choose Review & decide on the dashboard (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. Your investment is chartered. It has a defined what, a slice of scope, a known risk and a status. A sponsor’s name sits on the funding decision. All of it is in one place and 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, from a hypothesis in Discovery, through a draft, to a chartered, gated investment. Everything the sponsor needs to interrogate it lives on this one surface. None of it is a reassembled deck.

What’s next

• Read the dashboard explains every card on the surface you just filled.
• Present straight from the dashboard shows how to run a steering committee off it.
• For why it’s shaped this way, start with The Tollgate methodology.