Not Your Benefits, Not Your Realization

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Benefits Realization   Business Case   Strategy  

There is a lovely Polish idiom, "Nie mój cyrk, nie moje malpy." Translated literally, it means: "Not my circus, not my monkey." There is a great deal of value in project managers keeping this saying close to their hearts (and probably printed on their desks). This is no more true than with benefits realization.

Benefits realization is the topic du jour. Projects produce benefits. Organizations want to realize them. Guess who's being looked to in order to make sure that happens? Yup, that would be you. The project manager.

It's tempting, of course, to take that monkey and add it to the rest of the circus that's already on your back, of course. After all, you're now being invited to play with monkeys that are further up the food chain. Important monkeys. Strategic monkeys. Monkeys your executives value and care about. And yet, these are not your monkeys. This is not your circus. You have your own monkeys. And, frankly, you have your own circus. That should be plenty to worry about, all on its own.

Let's leave the monkeys aside for a minute to explore just what we are talking about, what it means and where accountability actually lies.

Projects do not exist in isolation, and for the most part they aren't valued on their own. We value projects because of what they produce, and what we can do with those results. Projects…

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