Net Benefits Management: For Life

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Benefits Realization  

It should be obvious that a project that is approved based on the cost benefit analysis contained in a business case should be held accountable to actually deliver on those projected benefits. Of course there will be inaccuracies in projections made so far in advance (and with such preliminary data), but that uncertainty should be factored into the decision to invest. It’s not an excuse to avoid accountability for delivering those benefits.

Organizations are slowly moving toward that benefits accountability, although there are still a number of challenges that need to be overcome. On a regular basis, I run into scenarios where accountability for benefits is creating tension in the organization--difficulties in measurement, difficulties in isolating causes of over or under performance, etc.

These are frequently valid concerns, although I can’t help thinking that if expected benefits were isolated enough to be predicted during business casing, then they should be isolated enough to be measured after delivery! However, there are two benefits-related challenges that I see more frequently than any other, and I want to look at both of them in this article:

1. The focus on gross benefits over net benefits
2. The focus on short to medium benefits over full lifecycle benefits

These challenges are related to one another, so I want to cover them both in this …

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