One Release Away from Reality

Kevin Coleman is a highly skilled senior level project and program manager/advisor with experience leading projects with labor budgets ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to multi-million dollar budgets across multiple industries.

  Benefits Realization   Estimating  

Benefits realization is always a challenge--and must be closely monitored throughout the project. After all, the benefits are why the project has been funded and initiated in the first place. It has been my experience that in many cases, the program or project sponsor stands to gain the most value from the initiative. But benefits management is easier said than done as the following examples will illustrate.

As long as I can remember, program and project scope management have been a challenge that require continual management. After all, scope is all about delivering what has been approved and expected. In fact, one project status report had a top priority issue that was appropriately titled, “Run Away Scope.”

While the title speaks volumes, the numbers told a much better story. The project leaders had expanded the scope of their effort to the point where the resource requirement and funding was more than twice the original estimate. However, they insisted that there was no impact to the overall schedule and no additional time would be required for them to meet their milestones.

On a large business transformation project, virtually every aspect of the organization would undergo a fair amount of change. Adding to the complexity of this undertaking was the high degree of integration between departments and business units. One business unit project manager …

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