MBA Case Preparation Sheet Template

Case Preparation Sheet: [Case title]

A one-page worksheet for preparing a business case for class discussion, a case exam or a learning-team meeting: the decision, the options, the criteria, the analysis, the recommendation, the risks, a two-minute opening statement and the questions you will bring to class. It is for MBA students in every case-based course, from the first week of the core year to case competitions. The sheet is the output of the reading protocol in mba/mba-case-reading-guide; this template adds guidance for each block, a quality checklist, variants for other case types and a fully filled Example on an original mini-case set in a fictional hospital. Source basis: the decision-focused case method described in the public history of business education and the student literature named under further reading, written up in original words. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

Document control

Contents

• 1. How to use the sheet
• 2. The sheet (blank)
• 3. Block-by-block guidance
• 4. Example mini-case: Tallow Creek Medical Center emergency department
• 5. Example: the completed sheet
• 6. Quality checklist
• 7. Variants for other case types
• 8. Common mistakes
• 9. Self-test questions
• 10. My notes and next steps
• Sources and further reading
• Answer key
• Revision history

1. How to use the sheet

The sheet forces the three things a case discussion rewards: a clear decision, analysis that discriminates between options, and a position you can defend in two minutes. It is deliberately short. A page limit makes you choose what matters, and it is what you will glance at when you are cold-called.

Fill blocks 1 to 3 in pencil: they often change once the numbers are in. Never fill block 5 before block 4.

2. The sheet (blank)

Case: [Case title] · Session: [N] · Date: YYYY-MM-DD

1. Decision. [Who] must decide [what] by [when], with [authority], under [binding constraints].

2. Options.

3. Criteria.

4. Analysis.

Swing assumption: [assumption]; my answer flips if it is [above / below] [value].

5. Recommendation. [Protagonist] should [action, scale, timing] because [reason 1 with number], [reason 2], [reason 3].

6. Risks.

7. Opening statement (two minutes, about 250 words). [Decision. Recommendation. Two reasons with numbers. Main risk and mitigation.]

8. Questions for class. [1. A question that tests the swing assumption.] [2. A question about implementation or stakeholders.]

After class. Class conclusion: [ ]. What I missed: [ ]. General lesson: [ ].

3. Block-by-block guidance

Block 1: Decision. Name the person, not the company. State the action in their power, the deadline, the authority they have (recommend, approve, negotiate) and the binding constraint that makes the decision hard (budget, capacity, a covenant, a regulator, a board). Good: "The chief operating officer must recommend to the board in six weeks how to cut emergency-department walkouts within an operating budget increase of USD 1.2m." Weak: "Should the hospital improve its emergency department?" The weak version cannot be wrong, so it cannot be useful.

Block 2: Options. List what the case proposes, add "do nothing", and add at least one option of your own, typically a phased, partial, staged or combined version. Options must be mutually exclusive as written (if A and B can be combined, list "A plus B" as its own option). Record where each option comes from: if every option is the protagonist's own, you may be inheriting their framing.

Block 3: Criteria. Three to five criteria that the decision maker would sign up to, each with a measure and, if you will score, a weight. Choose them before you score the options, or you will choose criteria that make your favourite win. Typical sets: value (NPV, margin, payback), risk (downside, variance, safety), feasibility (people, time, capability), reversibility, strategic fit, and the interests of affected stakeholders. In ethics-heavy cases, make the stakeholder or safety criterion explicit rather than leaving it implicit in "risk" (see mba/mba-ethics-guide).

Block 4: Analysis. Two or three numbers that discriminate between the options, computed from the exhibits, with the Excel formula or the exhibit reference next to each. Then one sensitivity: find the assumption that would flip your answer and compute the value at which it flips. A scoring table with weights is useful when criteria cannot all be expressed in money; show the weights so a classmate can challenge them. Pitfalls: computing everything the exhibits allow; numbers without units or periods; a scoring table whose weights were set after seeing the scores.

Block 5: Recommendation. One sentence a busy executive could act on: what, how much, by when, and why. Include the key number. Commit even when the evidence is mixed; say what would change your mind.

Block 6: Risks. Two to four risks to the recommended option, each with a mitigation or a trigger (a measurable event that makes you change course). Triggers turn a risk list into a plan: "If walkouts are not below 4% after six months, start the fast-track build."

Block 7: Opening statement. About 250 words, spoken in two minutes: the decision, the recommendation, two reasons with numbers, the main risk and its mitigation. Do not retell the case. Rehearse it aloud once; this is what you say when cold-called to open (mba/mba-case-reading-guide section 7).

Block 8: Questions for class. Two questions you would like the class to debate: one about the swing assumption, one about implementation or stakeholders. They are useful contributions when the discussion stalls and they show you have thought beyond your own answer.

After class. Three lines: what the class concluded, what you missed, and the general lesson the instructor drew. These lines are your exam revision notes; transfer recurring misses to mba/mba-error-log.

4. Example mini-case: Tallow Creek Medical Center emergency department

Situation. Tallow Creek Medical Center is a regional hospital whose emergency department (ED) sees about 62,000 visits a year. Over the past year, 6.0% of patients who registered left without being seen by a clinician, about 3,720 people, after a median wait of 58 minutes from arrival to first contact with a provider. Patients who leave may go without care they need, some return sicker, and the walkouts were the most common complaint in the community survey. The board has asked the chief operating officer, Mei-Lin Sato, to recommend a plan within six weeks; the board will approve an operating increase of up to USD 1.2m a year if the case is sound.

Sato's team has developed three options. (A) A fast-track unit for low-acuity patients, staffed 14 hours a day by physician assistants and a nurse, requiring a USD 400,000 fit-out of an unused clinic area. (B) A triage team of a physician and a nurse at the front door during the busiest 12 hours, starting assessments and tests while patients wait. (C) A partnership with an independent urgent-care operator next to the hospital, to which triage nurses would redirect suitable low-acuity patients; Tallow Creek would pay a coordination fee and lose the contribution from those visits. The finance team estimates each completed ED visit contributes USD 320 on average, and that about 12% of patients who would otherwise have walked out are admitted, each admission contributing USD 2,500; redirected low-acuity visits contribute only USD 95. The hospital uses an 8% discount rate and a five-year horizon for service investments.

The chief nursing officer warns that the hospital already has nursing vacancies, and that recruiting physician assistants for option A would take six to nine months. The head of the emergency department supports A, which other hospitals in the region have adopted.

Exhibit 1. Options: costs and expected effects (operations and finance teams) (Example)

Exhibit 2. Contribution assumptions (finance team) (Example)

5. Example: the completed sheet

Case: Tallow Creek Medical Center emergency department (Example) · Session: 7 · Date: YYYY-MM-DD

1. Decision. Mei-Lin Sato, chief operating officer, must recommend to the board within six weeks how to cut ED walkouts (6.0%, about 3,720 patients a year) and waiting time, within an operating increase of USD 1.2m a year, given nursing vacancies and a six-to-nine-month lead time to hire physician assistants.

2. Options.

3. Criteria.

4. Analysis. A recovered walkout is worth $320 + 0.12 \times 2500 = 620$ dollars of contribution.

Walkouts avoided counts patients who stay in the ED, so for C it is $53{,}000 \times (6\% - 4\%) = 1{,}060$; about 540 more of the baseline walkouts sit among the 9,000 redirected patients, who are treated next door and earn the hospital no ED contribution. The lost contribution of USD 855,000 values all 9,000 redirected visits at USD 95, a simplification: excluding the 540 who would have walked out anyway gives =8460*95 = USD 803,700 and a net annual benefit of USD -296,500, so C still loses money.

Scores used (Example): financial A 4, B 5, C 1, D 2; patient safety A 5, B 4, C 3, D 1; feasibility A 2, B 3, C 4, D 5; reversibility A 2, B 5, C 3, D 5.

Swing assumption: the share of recovered walkouts who are admitted (12%). At 6%, the net annual benefit falls to USD 15,600 for A (NPV USD -337,714) and USD 94,200 for B (NPV USD 376,113): B stays positive, A does not. Break-evens: A needs about 2,016 avoided walkouts a year (walkout rate at or below 2.75%), B about 1,258 (at or below 3.97%).

5. Recommendation. Sato should start the triage team (B) within three months, because it has the highest five-year NPV (USD 1.49m), stays positive if admissions are half the estimate, and can be scaled down if staffing fails; and she should prepare the fast-track unit (A) as a second stage, starting the physician-assistant recruitment now and building only if walkouts stay above 3% after six months.

6. Risks.

7. Opening statement.

"Ms Sato has to cut a walkout rate of 6%, almost 3,700 patients a year, with at most USD 1.2m a year of extra operating cost and a nursing shortage. I recommend a staged plan: start the front-door triage team now and prepare the fast-track unit as stage two. Two reasons. First, the triage team has the best financial case, a five-year NPV of about USD 1.5m against USD 1.1m for the fast track, because it needs no fit-out and costs USD 370,000 a year less. Second, it is robust: if only 6% of recovered walkouts are admitted instead of 12%, the triage team is still worth about USD 0.4m while the fast track turns negative. The fast track does deliver the shortest wait, 24 minutes against 31, so I would not drop it: I would start recruiting physician assistants now, because of the long lead time, and build the unit if walkouts are still above 3% after six months. I would not choose the urgent-care partnership: it loses about USD 350,000 a year and still leaves 2,120 walkouts. The main risk is staffing the triage team with current vacancies; agency cover for six months and a month-three review address it."

8. Questions for class. (1) How reliable is the 12% admission estimate for patients who would have walked out, and how would we measure it after launch? (2) Should walkouts be valued by contribution at all, or should the board set a safety target and choose the cheapest way to meet it?

After class. Class conclusion: [ ]. What I missed: [ ]. General lesson: [ ].

6. Quality checklist

7. Variants for other case types

Course-specific additions: in operations cases, add the bottleneck and capacity numbers (mba/mba-process-analysis-card, mba/mba-queueing-card); in marketing cases, the target segment and customer economics (mba/mba-customer-lifetime-value-card); in strategy cases, the source of advantage and how long it lasts (mba/mba-competitive-advantage-card); in leadership cases, the people involved and what each needs.

8. Common mistakes

1. A decision with no decision maker. "The company should..." instead of what this person can do by this date.
2. Options that overlap. A and B can both be done, so comparing them as alternatives is meaningless.
3. No status quo. Without "do nothing" you cannot show that acting is better than not acting.
4. Criteria chosen after the scores. The scoring table then proves only your preference.
5. Analysis that describes rather than discriminates. Ratios and trends that are the same for every option.
6. Hidden weights. A score table without visible weights cannot be challenged, so it will not be believed.
7. No swing assumption. You cannot answer "what if you are wrong about X?" in class.
8. A hedged recommendation. "It depends" is not a recommendation; state what it depends on and choose.
9. Risks without mitigations. A list of worries is not a plan.
10. An opening statement that retells the case. Everyone has read it; start with the recommendation.
11. Ignoring people and ethics. Staffing, morale, patients, customers and communities are criteria, not footnotes.
12. Filling the sheet once and never revisiting it. The "After class" lines are what make the next case better.

9. Self-test questions

1. What four elements must the decision block contain?
2. Why must "do nothing" appear among the options?
3. Why should criteria be written before the options are scored?
4. What is a trigger in the risk block, and why is it more useful than a mitigation alone?
5. What should a two-minute opening statement contain, and what should it leave out?
6. In the Tallow Creek example, what is the contribution value of one recovered walkout, and how is it built up?
7. Option A avoids more walkouts than option B. Why does B have the higher five-year NPV?
8. If only 6% of recovered walkouts are admitted, which options remain worth doing financially?
9. Why does option C lose money even though it reduces walkouts and diverts 9,000 patients to treatment elsewhere?
10. How would you change the sheet for a diagnosis case?

10. My notes and next steps

Sources and further reading

• Barnes, L. B., Christensen, C. R., and Hansen, A. J. (1994). Teaching and the Case Method (3rd ed.). Harvard Business School Press.
• Ellet, W. (2018). The Case Study Handbook: A Student's Guide (revised edition). Harvard Business Review Press.
• Garvin, D. A. (2003). Making the case: Professional education for the world of practice. Harvard Magazine, September-October 2003.
• Hammond, J. S., Keeney, R. L., and Raiffa, H. (1999). Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions. Harvard Business School Press.

Background on the decision tools used in block 4: mba/mba-npv-irr-card (NPV and the Excel NPV convention), mba/mba-decision-trees-card (expected values and sensitivity), and the open textbook OpenStax, Principles of Management (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), openstax.org.

Answer key

1. The decision maker, the action within their power, the deadline, and the binding constraint (with their authority).
2. Without the status quo you cannot show that acting beats not acting; it is the benchmark for every NPV and score.
3. Criteria chosen after scoring tend to favour the option you already prefer; writing them first makes the comparison a test rather than a justification.
4. A trigger is a measurable event (for example walkouts above 3.97% at month 6) that commits you to a change of course in advance. It turns a risk into a decision rule; a mitigation alone does not say when to act.
5. The decision, the recommendation, two reasons with numbers, and the main risk with its mitigation. Leave out the case summary and long background.
6. USD 620: the USD 320 contribution of the completed visit plus 12% of USD 2,500 (USD 300) expected from admissions.
7. B costs USD 370,000 a year less and needs no USD 400,000 fit-out, while A recovers only 620 more walkouts a year (worth USD 384,400); the net annual benefits are close (USD 387,600 against USD 373,200), and A's fit-out lowers its NPV to USD 1,147,574 against B's USD 1,490,079.
8. Only B: its net annual benefit is USD 94,200 (NPV USD 376,113), while A falls to USD 15,600 a year (NPV USD -337,714) and C loses more.
9. Redirection gives up USD 95 of contribution on each of 9,000 visits (USD 855,000 a year), more than the USD 657,200 recovered from 1,060 avoided walkouts, before the USD 150,000 annual fee. It may still be good for patients, but it is not a financial case.
10. Block 1 becomes the problem and its symptoms, block 2 the candidate causes, and block 5 the main cause with evidence and what would disprove it.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Structure aligned with the decision-focused case method described in the public history of business education and the student literature named above (Ellet 2018; Barnes, Christensen and Hansen 1994; Garvin 2003), and with the decision-analysis steps of Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa (1999). The worksheet, the guidance, the Tallow Creek Medical Center mini-case and its analysis are original; no published case, teaching note or textbook text is copied or paraphrased, and the hospital and every person in it are fictional. The example is a teaching exercise in management decision making, not clinical or medical guidance. This template is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any school or case publisher. Check your course syllabus and honour code for the rules that apply to you. Template licence: MIT.