Delivering Project Results through Service Management

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   CRM   Estimating   Organizational Project Management   Stakeholder Management  

If you have read some of my articles over the last few years, you know I am a strong proponent of the importance of shifting project management from a constraints focus (delivering on time, scope and budget) to a benefits focus—achieving the business benefits the project was approved to deliver.

In talking to project managers about this concept, there is a sense that they agree with the theory but have great difficulty putting it into practice in their organizations. Those difficulties are generally the result of the way the organization is structured—benefits generally occur after the project when PMs and teams have moved on to other work.

If the organization isn’t holding the business area that “owns” the deliverables accountable for achieving the benefits, they often don’t occur—and even if that accountability does occur, it kicks in after the project has handed the deliverables over; it isn’t a consideration during project development and execution.

This leaves project managers asking what they can do to improve the chances of achieving the benefits if the organizational structure they operate within doesn’t support it. Decision making that focuses on preserving benefits alignment even if it sacrifices scope, budget and/or schedule is part of it, but I believe one of the areas where the most impact can occur is …

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