Project Benefits
The point of completing projects is to get the benefit from the change that is delivered. Projects are done to improve things, so it is important to know what benefits you can expect from a project and how these will be measured.
Unfortunately, many projects don’t have robust benefits realization plans and when the work is completed no one can tell whether or not the project actually achieved what it set out to deliver. This is particularly common in projects that are not part of a program, as program management frameworks tend to be stronger on benefits realization than project management methodologies.
Here are three tips to help build a strong benefits culture for your Program Management Office (PMO).
1. Clarify What A Benefit Is
Everyone knows what a benefit is, right? In reality, everyone on the Project Board probably has a different idea about what benefits the project will deliver. Personal agendas come into play, which is to be expected. Individual stakeholders will look for the ‘what’s in it for me’ and potentially miss the bigger picture benefits that will be delivered more widely across the organization.
Work with your stakeholders and the Project Board to establish what elements of the corporate strategy this project is helping to achieve. You should be able to clearly align any benefits from the project to measurable targets that contribute to goals at a corporate level.
You can also include benefits that only have an impact on one department, or that are on the personal agendas of the executives, but these should be supplemental to the common understanding of the overall project benefits.
2. Appoint Benefit Owners
Benefits, like tasks, need owners. If you don’t appoint a benefit owner, the benefit will not get measured and may not even be realized at all. Typically, the benefit owner is the person who receives the benefit, so if the benefit is an increase in sales, the Sales Director would be the person responsible for managing the realization of this benefit.
Appoint your benefit owners as early as you can – preferably soon after the business case has been approved. These people can have the realization and measurement of benefits included in their annual objectives, and those of their teams.
It is not enough to simply name the owners. They must take full responsibility for the benefit, which means they also have to understand how it will be delivered and how it will be measured.
3. Set Up A Benefits Recording Mechanism
You may find that the benefit owner wants to be responsible for creating the mechanism to record the benefits. Alternatively, they may want help from the PMO. Some enterprise project management tools have the capacity to record information that will be helpful for benefits tracking, so you could make use of your existing tool suite to capture useful data or generate reports.
Ideally, the PMO can standardize the way benefits are tracked and measured, although as benefits vary so wildly, a standard approach may not be practical in all situations. Having said that, it is good for the PMO to have the overall picture so that they can produce consolidated reports for all benefits across all projects and programs.
Be aware that in the early days, the project may deliver quick wins and you may see significant benefits being achieved. After this first flush, though, the numbers may tail off. Benefit owners should be prepared for this to happen. Fix a time period for benefits recording. You may find that after a year, any benefits are being absorbed into the business as usual forecasting and it is no longer necessary to continue to track them.
The benefits recording mechanism should also include a way for the benefit owner to share the results with people outside of the PMO. His or her department may also want to hear about the benefits, especially if their objectives – and maybe their bonuses – depend on the results.
Summary
Benefits tracking is often thought difficult, because many business cases are predicated on hard to measure or intangible benefits. If those numbers are weeded out in the business case preparation, you will be left with structured benefits and a plan to realize them. Then all benefit owners need to do is establish how to best use the project deliverables to get the most benefit, and record the results. Easy!