HMMM, Benefits Centric

 

Of Course I Know What Benefits Are

Adopting an organization that is benefit’s centric as opposed to project centric involves many dimensions.  At the heart of this adoption is change management and mindset realignment.  The model that Benefits Management is directly aligned with a Cost/Benefit Case study is the first, and probably, the most difficult, mindset to change.  A fundamental question is:  “are you willing to look at costs benefits over what the new ability being delivered to the business, over the cost and benefit of completing an activity to deliver a product or service?”

I like to call the project benefits focused mindset as an “activity centric” approach to organizing and managing the work.  An activity focused approach establishes a foundation of what will be done (scope) when it will be done (schedule) and how much is it going to cost me (cost).  Once the baseline is established for the work – the project manager monitors and controls against this triple constraint and measures its success against the activities that are completed (requirements, development, testing, etc.) until the product or service is complete and moved to operations.  Benefit centric organizations, while they treat projects as important, consider the benefits of the work in progress and delivered as the critical component in decision making.

One of the common challenges I have face when trying to introduce benefits realization to an activity centric organization is the roadblock that:  “We already know about Benefits”.  Their paradigm (and I don’t mean this as a buzzword) is in relation to Cost Benefits cases and it’s relevance to projects.  One of the first mindset changes in moving from an activity centric environment to a benefits centric environment is that benefits are realized from many components, not just a specific product or service.  Projects (in which a product or service capability is built) are one factor in the benefit equation as well as other components such as workflow modification, licensing agreement changes, supplier costs, etc.

The shift in a benefits centric organization is that the benefit comes first, not the triple constraint of the project.  The benefit is directly aligned with a strategic intent of the organization and various components delivery things to contribute to the benefits.  If the benefits forecast change, the overall amount of work being done might change.  You might decide not to do some projects, or cut the scope of projects.  While in an activity based organization, you traditionally focused on something changed in the ability to create the product/service and deal with accordingly with no alignment with how it meets the benefits once it goes live.  While a benefits centric organization truly tries to answer the question, did the work we did – return the results we expected.  It doesn’t end when the project does.

This concept takes a little while to grasp and does represent a new mindset.  We are approaching it slowly as there are several concepts that must be understood before getting into the mechanics of benefits realization.

We're All In This Together !!!

Dave