How to Write Cases in IT: Three Simple Schemes with Which the Text Will Work

It’s a joke, of course. But coming from a ‘normal’ PR to IT, I faced the fact that I had to write these very cases. Suffering from perfectionism and inspiration, I started looking for the perfect formula. But I ran into boring textbooks and empty talk. After testing my own hypotheses and getting a cool feedback, I decided to share my ‘shady schemes’ for writing a case study.

So as not to be unsubstantiated, I will reinforce the schemes with examples from my favorite case study, Mediacube. This is an official YouTube affiliate network that works with bloggers in more than 60 countries, with a total of about 200 million people.

The main principle of a good case is not to boast about your strengths, but to solve the client’s problem. Because no one wants to read about ‘how good we are’ and ‘how well we did everything’. The right move is to tell that you helped the company reduce call-center costs by automating processes, or how you made the MolaMola platform, which helped raise money for doctors in the first wave of COVID.

So when you are given the task of writing a case study on the results of some project, think first of all about what good you did for the client. If you can’t come up with it yourself, ask the client. Several questions at once:

In the case of Mediacube we helped to build a business in IT. We created a platform that gives Influencers access to statistical data and automates financial interaction with them. It allows to maintain document flow, control managers’ salaries, hire new bloggers, manage referrals, and implement various marketing tools.

Very often a client-side manager, no matter how eloquent he/she is, freezes and hesitates to respond. Or even says that he/she doesn’t know anything. Then give direction to his/her thoughts.

For example, describe possible problems:

Be sure to specify for whom the new product is intended. A clear description of the target audience will allow you to ‘hook’ more new customers with the case.

Thus, the description of tasks to be solved in the Mediacube project in the ready-made case turned into a whole story, which at the same time describes the target audience.

The original goal of the project was to automate the work performed by managers. It is unbecoming to manually process tons of reports from Google. At the same time, they needed an account for bloggers, where you could see all the statistics for the channel. After that, the automation of payments. After a while, the client wanted to stop using third-party services that help Influencers register in the affiliate network, and decided to create their own cloud service.

Everything together had to turn into a system where users’ statistical and financial information was collected, and the functions of an ‘electronic wallet’ were implemented. After we had automated the work of managers, we were tasked with making a system that would contain data on millions of channels in order to conduct their analytics, target advertising campaigns, and track ‘rising stars’. There was to be a kind of a catalog of all YouTubers with the ability to filter them by various parameters and select them according to requests (audience, subject, geography).

What else does the reader need to know? How long the team has been working on the project. It is important to outline a clear timeline so that those who will come to you with similar tasks understand in advance how much time to allot.

For example, in the case of Mediacube, the creation of a personal account and automation of processes took about three weeks. The next phase of development lasted about 3–4 months. After that, the first partners began to use the network, but the development continued for about 8 months more.

If you are working on the image of an agency and want to show who is behind its name, tell a little about the team. This will allow you to justify the cost and prove that the guys you are putting on the project are skillful.

The next important point is the results. Of course, right after the release, there are no obvious results yet. But in our case, for example, it’s time to rewrite the cases. And this is a great reason to share the results.

It is a common courtesy to describe problems if they arise in the course of your work, and ways to solve them. This is necessary to clearly prove to potential clients that you are able to handle any task in the most graceful way.

When you have gathered all the necessary information from the client and the project manager, you need to lay it out. I usually put it in a fairly simple and reader-friendly form.

As a result, we get a case, in which we tell how we can improve the lives of potential clients, we understand the methods and ways to educate these clients a little bit, make it easier to work in the future.

See what it looks like here:

This is a visual scheme. Please don’t try to cram a bunch of screenshots with no explanation. If you ask me, when someone sends me an unfamiliar project in Figma, I give it a blank stare. Unless they explain to me what’s so cool about it, I won’t understand it. Same with your screenshots. Mere pictures without the ability to use the product or without even the slightest comment is a waste of time both for the reader and for you.

Basically, don’t try to overwhelm the reader with visuals. This is not a case where you are selling a design. Your task is to describe what’s under the hood. Something that not a marketer, technical director, or entrepreneur would understand by looking at a website or an app.

If you can create and insert gifs, do it. If you can hire a designer to make all the information structured, do it. But don’t you dare trying to group all the screenshots in one picture, where you can’t see anything. Again, think about the fact that you write a case not for a tick, but for the potential clients. Because a mere mortal will not read your work (as well as my article).

I’m not going to take any more of your time, I’ve disclosed all of my schemes and tips. If needed, I’ll update them later. Don’t hesitate to ask a question and share your own schemes of writing cases in IT!