Business Benefits Realization

  Governance   Stakeholder Management   ProjectsAtWork  

A concerted effort to manage and document the realization of business benefits is an indispensible key to the success of any program. It requires a well-defined business case and a structured approach to measuring and tracking the planned benefits throughout the program lifecycle.

Business benefits realization is a process that is often discussed and sometimes even practiced. The unfortunate truth is that, more often than not, the business case proposition is not analyzed post-program to verify whether the benefits are being realized — and what happens when they are not.

The traditional role of the program manager is to deliver an outcome of some sort. The PM is typically not tasked with identifying benefits, nor do they remain active in the program or project when the time arrives to harvest those benefits. The responsibility of “harvesting the benefits” is passed back to the business or, if pertinent, back to the program of which the project was a part.

However, it is imperative for the PM to be cognizant of the benefits their project has set out to gain, and, as such, all advanced PMs should be acutely aware of the benefits’ lifecycle and to know their role in that lifecycle.

The Business Perspective

Imagine this scenario: a business intends to invest capital in an idea that its management believes will improve efficiency and …

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