Summary

Once the business case has been approved, what then?

Too often benefits go ‘off the agenda’ and all of the focus is on delivering the project and hoping that this will enable the benefits to be delivered too. This vague approach to benefits delivery is why so few projects actually deliver in full the benefits expected or possible.

Benefits delivery management is a bit like the weather — everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it!

When you talk to organizations about benefits management, intellectually they see the need to do something about it, but don’t know where to begin.

Previous half-hearted attempts have often failed, making the task seem much harder.

The reason benefits management is not easy is that it is not clearly understood. Indeed, there are few other subjects on which so much nonsense has been written.

Benefits are often assumed to be a consequence of a project — “build it and they will come” — is the belief. But, this is rarely the case because projects tend to leave a ‘gap’ between what they deliver and what is needed to realize the benefits. We call this gap “hope”.

The Governance Teams (Project Sponsor/Steering Committee) don’t help by not focusing on the benefits either. They tend to get drawn into the project’s measures of success — on time, on budget — and forget the whole point of the project, which is to deliver the business outcomes, benefits and value promised in the business case.

To address this problem, we have developed a simple end-to-end benefits management process based on The Value Equation™. This process and supporting tools enables you to plan, protect and measure your projects’ outcomes, benefits and value both during the project and beyond.

The concepts of ‘protect’ and ‘beyond the project’ are the VDM difference.

Our “How to manage your benefits delivery” Guide is designed to enable you to easily “keep your eyes on the prize” and ensure you put in place the mechanisms to ensure your benefits’ delivery.

This involves taking active steps at the governance, PMO, project and business levels to protect the value of the project and not allow it to seep away during the project or subsequently.

This focus needs to continue on after the project has been completed and the project team disbanded as the realization of the expected benefits, including the post project delivered benefits, is why the project was commissioned in the first place. After the project has been finished is often the most valuable time (in terms of benefits value realization) and, therefore, needs continued monitoring governance.

While the project is planning, developing and delivering, the governance team needs to also be assigning accountabilities for benefits, planning their delivery (especially post-project), protecting and tracking the value’s realization to schedule. NB A few months delay in the realization of some benefits can potentially make a project unviable.

Our benefits delivery focus encompasses the roles and responsibilities of the project team, the business, the PMO and the governance team. All of you are jointly accountable for ensuring the benefits and value expected can and is realized from your project.

Benefits

This Guide

1. puts benefits are the forefront of people’s minds, rather than being a hoped for afterthought
2. provides a simple benefits realization planning process (and tracking mechanism)
3. provides the processes to ensure the value promised is actually delivered (now there’s an idea!)
4. enables you to take appropriate action when things go wrong or changes are proposed
5. ensures everyone associated with the project knows what their role is and how to perform it effectively — neither the project team nor the business can realize benefits on their own
6. enables post-project benefits not to be lost or forgotten, that you pursue them to realization
7. makes clear when the ‘project’ can be closed off and when the post-project governance and benefits realization work can be closed off.

Benefits delivery management now becomes part of ‘how you deliver projects’ rather than being the forgotten step-child of projects.

Who should read

This Guide should be read and used by

1. The Project Team to align the project and its delivery to the delivery of benefits
2. The Governance Team to actively protect and deliver the full value possible
3. The PMO to verify and track the value being and due to be delivered even after the end of the project
4. The Investment Committee/Board to track the value realized against the business case’ promised value (and understand the causes of any variances)
5. The Business to understand their role in realizing the benefits they expected and wanted from the project
6. Auditors to enable them to track the realization (and any loss) of value from projects and the portfolio.

All of these parties are jointly accountable for ensuring the benefits and value expected can be and are realized from the project. Now everyone knows what to do.

Contents

1. Understanding the prerequisites for benefits delivery management
2. Understanding the benefits management challenge
3. Understanding the four levels of benefits measurement
4. Understanding benefits accountabilities
5. The end-to-end benefits delivery management process
6. How assign accountability for benefits
7. How to plan for benefits (projects)
8. How to plan for benefits (business)
9. How to schedule your benefits
10. How to track and measure your project’s progress
11. How to track and measure your portfolio’s benefits and value realization
12. How to protect the project’s value (governance team)
13. How to protect the project’s value (project team)
14. How to protect the project’s value (business)
15. How to protect the portfolio’s value (PMO)
16. How to handover your project to the business
17. How to verify a project’s handover
18. How to govern benefits and value realization, post project
19. How to know when your ‘project’ has been completed.

This Guide is supported by a comprehensive accountabilities chart that enables all parties involved in benefits delivery to understand their correct roles.

Bonus

Benefits delivery accountabilities chart
A simple chart of benefits delivery accountabilities incorporating the Sponsor, Steering Committee, Project Team, PMO and Business. Each role’s accountabilities are defined in terms of their benefits delivery steps.Essential chart for all those accountable in any way for benefits delivery.

Did we get the value?
A value delivery management article by Jed Simms that discusses how you can track and measure whether you got the value from your projects without necessarily tracking the dollars. Uses two real-life examples as illustrations.

The end-to-end benefits management process schema and process map
Two simple illustrations of how value is delivered, managed and monitored end-to-end.The schema illustrates the necessary component parts and flows of benefits management

The process map illustrates the different roles in the end-to-end process and how they interrelate and build on each other

What you measure is what you get
A value delivery management article by Jed Simms on how too many projects measure the wrong dimensions and therefore miss out on the available value and, therefore, what to focus on and measure.