The Art and Science of Benchmarking

 

In the first in my blog series on Benchmarking I will opens with an introduction to the subject.  The material is based on a presentation I gave this year for a PMI UK webinar and an evening seminar for the PMI UK South

What is benchmarking?

Looking back at history, a benchmark was surveyor’s mark cut in a wall, pillar, or building and used as a reference point in measuring altitudes and levels. In today’s context, I like to describe benchmarking as the considered use of data as a way achieving three things.  Firstly, driving continuous improvement; secondly to support target setting and thirdly to foster sharing and learning across an organisation and with outside peers;

Put simply – Benchmarking is achieving important goals by comparing performance with colleagues and peers, using data.  To illustrate this, I have one personal and three professional examples which I will cover in a series of future blogs including this one.

To start with my personal example earlier this year with my daughter, I completed the London Winter 10km charity run.  We ran the course together, beat our target of going under one hour and raised over £1000 for Cancer Research.

A big part of achieving this goal was based on using the fantastic Park Run – who has heard of that – who has run?   Park Run is a weekly 5km group run, held at 100’s of locations mainly in the UK but increasingly also around the world.  It starts at 9.00 am every Saturday morning, has changed many people lives and for me provides the motivation to participate and improve my performance, supported by easily accessible data.  The data comes from the clever use of technology and is a simple matter of registering on the Park Run web site,  With registration comes a bar code and when you finish the Park Run the timers scan your code and give you a recorded time – with all the others – over 170,000 people in the UK each weekend.  For me a big incentive is also running with family and friends.   You get a record of your performance each time you run and a comparison to your previous performance; a personal best recorded for each different course you run; a comparison to others and very usefully, an age related % performance.  This all supports of an overall goal of keeping fit, and healthy, having opportunities to spend time with friends and family and as a bonus raising money for charity.

I am sure you will have your own examples of Benchmarking where data helps you in achieving personal goals. Following this blog I will share three professional examples of benchmarking at work, particularly in the context of projects and project management.