Important note:  this work was completed in 2009.

I was assigned as program manager to implement a major telecommunications ebonding capability for mobility services to signature customers throughout the world. This was a program to make a repeatable process that would help define a customized catalog of services for each customer yet a common interface to performing suppliers that would actually fulfill the orders for example a customer may have mobility needs in multiple countries throughout the world one in South America one in Asia one in Germany warning the Netherlands one in United States one in Mexico etc. etc. and there was no common wireless carrier they could fulfill all these orders. Each country had its own set of rules and data sets that made a single interface impossible to implement. My role as program manager involves several different steps:

1. Determine the key stakeholders in the program. I was given the charge to implement program management but there wasn’t any formal documents that made such an announcement. So I created a program charter and had an executive sign it and email it to his peers to authorize resources to plan the program.
2. Assembled a small team from the product house, operations, and IT to create a joint definition of work effort.
3. Shared this document with multiple organizations to assemble a core team of stakeholders and a responsibility matrix.
4. Created a program plan which defined various work packages and the time box timeframe for certain deliverables. Among these deliverables were a business requirements document. Benefits realization plan, and a governance model.
5. Developed seven project charters to implement the work efforts. Three of the charters were specific to IT development one of the charters was to the marketing and technical implementation plan two of the charters were specific to process and lifecycle support, and final charter were specific to developing a repeatable process for catalog management.
6. Mapped the cost of the projects based on a high-level order magnitude to a benefits realization plan and established the expectations for the deliverables.

To summarize, my planning processes is first to make sure I have owners and executive sponsorship from the business, next it is to do a program charter the authorized organizations to commit resources to the planning, next is planning the roadmap and the business realization plans, next is to issue a program plan which outlined how work package are aligned which then will generate a charter for each project that will help meet those objectives. Once the charters are defined a project manager will be assigned there will be responsible for implementing the requirements of the work. Tools and techniques that I use in this planning process is constant communication and dialogue with key stakeholders and a small work team. Interacting with knowledge workers through facilitating meetings with different organization to define business rules, program requirements, baselining documents and using the concept of progressive elaboration to monitor control their evolution from a planning cycle until project implementation. Finally, the process involves interacting with the teams through a defined governance model so all organizations know the protocol for handling issues, communicating status, and reporting task completion.

The 2015 PMI Pulse of the profession continues to stress that mature benefits management practices distinguish high performing organizations from less successful ones.  Besides obtaining higher success rate at meeting project objectives, organizations with mature Benefits Realization maturity have better on-time and on-budget results.  The text below is extracted from PMI’s annual Pulse of the Profession.

Benefits realization illustrates—and measures—precisely how projects and programs add true value to the enterprise. Organizations that implement benefits realization programs understand this value, because they are capturing the hard facts needed to showcase the return on their project management investments.

But far too few organizations have effective benefits realization programs in place—in fact, many have no program at all—so they are missing an opportunity to understand what would help them increase the rate of project success. We need to continue studying the challenges of benefits realization to gain insight into ways organizations can meet those challenges.

Our 2015 Pulse research indicates that only one in five organizations reports having a high level of benefits realization maturity. While low, this still represents an increase of 63 percent since 2013, indicating a high level of interest in this topic, even while organizations struggle to become adept at it. High performers are over four times more likely to report high benefits realization maturity (39 percent compared to 9 percent of low performers), because they recognize it as a business imperative.

In addition, organizations that report high benefits-realization maturity have significantly better project outcomes, as noted in the chart. Benefits realization is challenging, but when executed well, it helps ensure that the outcome of a project produces the desired benefits, as projected in the business case. This is achieved by establishing, measuring, and communicating the results of an organization’s initiatives. Such insight into performance is also an essential planning tool for future projects and resource allocation, including talent.

“What we are realizing now is your performance in the job today is what is actually going to dictate work that you get tomorrow,” said Mark Childers, PMI-ACP, PMP, Project Manager III, DOD & State, FLUOR Government Group.

While we have seen a significant increase in the number of organizations that are highly mature with this competency, we still see a lower-than-ideal percentage of organizations investing in benefits realization, considering the return.

Organizations with mature benefits realization processes can benefit from:

•        Clearly identifying the strategic rewards prior to starting a project

•        Effectively assessing and monitoring risks to project success

•        Proactively planning for making necessary changes in the organization

•        Explicitly defining accountability for project success

•        Routinely extending responsibility for integration to the project team

A combination of Organizational Agility and compliance to mature Benefits Realization Practices will help an organization achieve superior results andtranslate into a competitive advantage.

Benefit Realization and Analytics

One of the most compelling reasons for benefit realization the ability for the program manager to report back to the business that the investment value is being realized. In order to perform this task properly the program manager is going to apply many of the principles of analytics. This blog wants to give high-level definition of analytics and how they will apply to program management and benefits realization.

As the image shows analytics have a couple major components to them that are right in line with the entire benefits realization concept. First analytics is a higher-level of looking at your data and communicating results visually as well as tactically. Analytics is looking at patterns in the data, it may be trends in maybe cause-and-effect it may be direct or indirect relationships. So the first step is understanding the data in the enablers to create. Second analytics relies on statistical disciplines, this includes using tools to extract data in the appropriate research in business intelligence in order to quantify the performance of that data.  Finally analytics does favorite data visualization to communicate the inside of the knowledge that has been obtained by the program manager that is reporting the actual results of the benefits realization.

In some ways the use of analytics expands the role of the program manager into a couple different areas both the delivery of the solution as well is running of the business. Analytics falls mainly under a business analysis skill set, and PMI now has a certification in business analysis, as well as performance analysis of the different components with in the program itself.  The program manager will need to be able to look at production data and be able to identify the patterns and communicate those and how they relate to the program itself. Analytics will require the current state the future state of the KPIs and how the benefits are going to be able to measure is associated KPIs. The other area that analytics will expand the program manager skill set is on analyzing a series of data points as opposed to just a snapshot in time traditionally project managers are able to give a readout of the current earned value, with respect to schedule and cost and project be earned value to completion. Analytics, as applied to the program, will also need to look at past performance and project future performance across multiple components and the people aspect of implementing these components.

What analytics will drive is a new means of communicating for the program manager. As mentioned in the definition above analytics resonate with the visual explanation. The program manager will be expected to provide that visual explanation interrelationship between expected results in actual results and the approach to close the gap is the variance is about tolerance level. This is not to be dependent on good data which will drive the program deliverables to ensure the proper hand also milestones are defined. It will also require the program manager to be able to map out the relationships between project results and business performance.

This is an exciting growth area for program managers and a great opportunity for a strategic project management office to be able to deliver more value to the business. This is another step in the journey to aligning the strategy of the company with the investment is being made. The program manager be looked at to be able to explain the journey and demonstrate where the organization is on that journey. And be able to do so in a visual data proven presentation that will transcend all components of the value chain.