The Money Files

In this video I talk about the 5 things that you should consider before you start a new professional deal or relationship with a vendor.

Earlier this month I wrote about Carlos Serra’s presentation on benefits realisation at the PMI Global Congress EMEA in London. He had some great practical advice about managing the benefits realisation process, the highlights of which I’ll share with you now.

Carlos talked about the four things that are required in order to actively manage benefits realisation. These are:

• Planning the benefits
• Reviewing and measuring benefits
• Realising benefits

An organisation-level benefits strategy, of which the first three items form part.

The benefits chain

Carlos explained the benefits chain. It’s the reason why you need a benefits strategy and an organisational level, and that underpins everything to do with benefits realisation. It’s actually quite complex, but it looks a bit like this.

He didn’t share what a benefits realisation strategy would look like but said that the formal strategy defines the process and sets the organisation’s approach for benefits realisation. Part of the strategy is a detailed exploration of the other three elements.

Planning the benefits

In this step you decide what the expected outcomes should be and write a clear definition. You also get the business case approved if it hasn’t been already. This is important because it gives you the reference to identify project success at the end.

Having clearly defined strategic objectives are essential to being able to realise any benefits and create value for the business.

Review and measure benefits

You and the team need to acknowledge that reviewing and measuring benefits is not a one-off activity. You’ll have to find ways to continually do this, so create mechanisms that are repeatable or you’ll be reinventing the wheel all the time. Decide how frequently you are going to be carrying out reviews and make sure you are resourced appropriately to do so. I would go for once a month, but it really does depend on the type of benefits you are expecting to see. With something like sales, you can track these monthly but if your project is delivering improved employee satisfaction you may be better off measuring this with a quarterly survey or something even less frequent. It’s impossible to provide a hard and fast rule unfortunately.

At each review take time to look at whether the outcomes are planned and expected and in line with the business case predictions.

Then communicate the outcomes to the stakeholders. They have a vested interest in what is happening and can play a valuable part in helping correct the course if you aren’t seeing the benefits you expected. Many businesses, Carlos said, stop tracking so they never know if they are successful or not. You’ll have to decide when to stop and when those benefits become ‘business as usual’.

Realise the benefits

‘Realisation’ is a set of activities that ensures the project outcomes are fully integrated and monitored after the closure of the project. It isn’t done, Carlos said, by the project team, but in my experience project managers have a large part to play in making sure this part is set up correctly, even if they don’t manage it day to day. Realisation is the organisational work required to make sure the benefits recorded in the business case actually happen.

As you can see, the benefits realisation management process is both part of the project and not part of the project. The early steps around strategy and process definition are either the work of the sponsor or PMO, as are the final parts around realisation. The bit in the middle is where the project manager and team can add value.

On a programme, things might look slightly different as programmes (and portfolios) often include an element of BAU work, such as keeping a project deliverable operational while waiting for the rest of the projects to be delivered and a final handover to operational team members at an appropriate stage.

Either way, the project manager has to play a full part in this so it’s important to fully understand the process to know where you fit in. It helps you ask the right questions:

• Has the business case specified benefits?
• If not, why not?
• What are you expecting this to deliver and how will we know if we’ve met those expectations?
• What benefits tracking are you expecting and how long are we going to do it for?
• Who is responsible for the bits I am not responsible for?

And I’m sure you can think of others.

I really enjoyed this presentation, especially the section on the tools you can use to manage benefits. That’s what I’ll be writing about next, inspired by Carlos’ presentation.

In this video I discuss the three reasons why you should write a business case for your project, even if you work in an organisation that doesn't normally pay much heed to that kind of paperwork.

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Good luck!

Benefits can either be certain and quantifiable (like generating more money) or less quantifiable (like improving employee satisfaction), according to Carlos Serra, who presented on the topic at the PMI Global Congress EMEA 2015 in London this week.

“Benefits are a result of action and behaviour, and they provide something of value to someone,” he explained.

Benefits come from change

Each change we do as part of a project delivers benefits. We need those benefits because projects are supposed to move the business forward in terms of its strategy. Each benefit helps fill the gap between where the business is now and where it wants to be. Project benefits are little (and sometimes big) jumps towards hitting the ‘desired state’ of the business.

He showed a graph a bit like this:

In other words, the delivery of incremental benefits over time shift the organisation from the current state to the desired future position. And projects deliver those benefits.

Realising benefits

Carlos then went on to explain the term ‘benefits realisation’ and said that it wasn’t easy to understand. He’s from Brazil but now based in the UK and in his native Portuguese there are three different ways to translate ‘realise’. Even in English there are different meanings of the word including:

• To become fully aware of something
• To cause something good or bad to happen
• To make money by selling something.

He asked the audience if other languages held the same difficulties and there were nods from around the room. Arabic, Dutch and Spanish speakers all confirmed that ‘realisation’ didn’t really translate easily.

Carlos defined benefits realisation like this:

“Benefits realisation is a process to make benefits happen and also to make people fully aware of them throughout the entire process.”

Benefits realisation management defined

Benefits realisation management is the third term that Carlos explained. This is a set of processes required to deliver benefits.

He said that the realisation life cycle starts way before the project and happens mostly after the project so the processes are far-reaching in terms of alignment with the project life cycle.

Finally, he concluded by saying that because of this it is not possible for the delivery of benefits to only be the responsibility of the project manager or team.

Actually, that wasn’t his final conclusion. He went on to say a lot more about benefits realisation management and I’ll be covering that in another article. Watch this space!