Tracking Project Benefits

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Benefits Realization   Stakeholder Management  

A project will only be approved if there are solid benefits that it will bring to the organization or client. Those benefits may be tangible (like decreasing production costs), or perhaps they are intangible (such as increasing morale of employees).

The benefits should be identified in the initial stages of planning a project and will be a factor in the decision to move forward with the project or not. Some work must be done to quantify those benefits and communicate or discuss them with stakeholders. The benefits should not be forgotten about during the execution and monitoring of the project; instead, they should be tracked and the team should continue to discuss and communicate the benefits that are being realized by the organization as a result of the project.

Traits
Benefits have certain traits that should be documented and tracked by the project team. The most obvious trait is tangible versus intangible:

Tangible benefits can be quantified or measured; they have hard dollars or times associated with them. A good example of a tangible benefit is decreasing the amount of time it takes for an employee to make the widget (or part of the widget); this will increase production or decrease payroll.

An intangible benefit is something that cannot be measured, or cannot be measured easily. An example would be installing a better break room for employees. That break …

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