When Project Benefits Erode
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy,
Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Peter Tarhanidis, Conrado Morlan, Jen Skrabak, Mario Trentim, Christian Bisson, Yasmina Khelifi, Sree Rao, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, David Wakeman, Ramiro Rodrigues, Wanda Curlee, Lenka Pincot, cyndee miller, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, Marat Oyvetsky
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Date
By Conrado Morlan
The project you led is complete! You are celebrating with your stakeholders and other project managers. The company is right on track to achieve its strategic goals based on the benefits delivered by your project.
After handing over the project to the business functions, you are now ready for your next move. You are nervous and excited about discovering your new assignment, so you don’t worry about your recently completed project. Somebody else will be following up on the project’s contributions to the organization. You’re done, right? Well, let’s find out.
During the first six months of your new assignment, you overhear that the benefits of the project you recently completed are not at the expected level. In parallel with your current assignment, you start looking for clues about what’s gone wrong.
Your findings reveal that related processes supporting the product or service delivered by your project are not aligned and are producing damage and losses, resulting in the erosion of benefits. Examples may include:
- Regulatory fines—The project’s support processes did not provide regulatory reports on time or were missing data requested by federal and/or local authorities. The lack of compliance results in fines.
- Overtime—The lack of clarity about the process and the changes brought by your project led the operational areas of the business to continue to do work as usual, producing incorrect results that had to be redone.
- Overlooked tax deductions—The finance department was not notified of the new process, and the organization continued to pay taxes that were supposed to be exempted after the project was completed.
- Union disputes—The implementation of the new project impacted union workers’ duties that weren’t contemplated in the current contract. New contract negotiations tend to be long and have a large impact to the organization.
So what should you do? Focus on your current project assignment and ignore the benefits erosion? Or work on a solution with the project’s stakeholders?
Whatever your answer, one thing you will need to do for sure is update the project’s lessons learned. The project may be over, but benefits didn’t reach the expected levels. So as the former project manager, you’re obligated to document what went wrong to support efforts at establishing a solution.
Have you ever learned of benefits erosion after completing one of your projects? If so, how did you react?
Posted
by
Conrado Morlan
on: May 25, 2016 01:38 PM |
Permalink
Comments (8)
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Von Brickhouse
Retired Military (LTC)| Northrop Grumman
Harker Heights, Tx, United States
Thanks for the topic on eroding project benefits.
An excellent and well cover topic .
Birken,
Thank you for taking the time to read the post. I am glad you enjoy it.
Amol Vaidya
Group Manager (Architecture Group)| Nikko Asset Management
Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan
Thought provoking indeed.
Thank you Von Brickhouse.
I am glad you like it.
Thank you for the great post.
Mohan Dahima
GM -PMO| Kalyani Steels Limited
Surat, Gujarat, India
This happens.The first thought came to mind after reading this document is that project closeout was not done properly. Deliverable were not validated by concerned user.
If all the requirement as mentioned in contract were fulfilled then there might be issues with scope document itself.There might not be total clarity regarding scope and some crucial component of scope missed.Certainly this is the lesson learning for next project.
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