Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
Have you ever practiced benefits management in your programs or organization? If you have, what are the valuable experiences and real-life challenges that you can share? Saving Changes...
That is quite a large topic indeed. I notice you only ask about its challenges - but it does have its own benefits too, especially in helping develop the case for future projects. My first question - what stage is your project at? In my experience, benefits management is quite a high-resource activity and you would need to include it in your intiial project design and resource planning for it to have much chance of being meaningful. I'd also consider your stakeholders views of it and whether they will fully support this before going forward with it. Also what field is this in and are there likely to be clear measures that will be agreed on by all stakeholders? Interesting stuff! Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
The most value experience and take-away that I would have to share is that Benefits Management (for many organizations) is better viewed as a management opportunity and not always a program team activity.
What I mean by that is, not all programs lend themselves to being subjected to benefits management. This does not mean that the program does not have a benefit, to the contrary. But rather, the context of the program, the organizational considerations, and other factors contribute to whether or not management of the product of the projects of the program benefit is appropriate.
For example, let's say you have a program to provide 200 worldwide executives with iPADs, a few apps, and training. Such a program likely has a compelling business case, but among other priorities that the company has, does managing the benefits of such a program merit the time, cost, and effort? Maybe, maybe not. The same could be said of giving laptops to sales people, big screen monitors to developers, not to mention such things as mobile phones, Blackberries, and iPhones, etc.
Now let's take a different program, let's say a program that will significantly change and automate and improve the supply chain and reduce operating costs and staffing levels. Does managing the benefits of such a program merit the time, cost, and effort to do so?
By way of policy and practice, not all programs need to have their product of the projects of the program benefits managed (or managed in the same way).
And of the programs that do need to have their benefits managed, there is ample room for multiple approaches and techniques for doing this. Some techniques may involve incorporating the expected benefit into the line of business functional measurements to ensure that they are achieved. Other techniques may involve active benefits management, but not the assignment of line of business goals and objectives.
So getting back to your question about benefits management valuable experiences and real-life challenges, I would offer that benefits management is not a one-shoe fits all sizes proposition (or process) that every program is automatically subjected to an din the same way.
I hope we heard and learn from others. This (Benefits Management) can be quite challenging. Organizations that do a good job of this are in select company..! Saving Changes...
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
Thanks for all your inputs.
Mark, I agree with you that benefit management is not one size fits all, and in some cases, would need additional resource to manage it. This will become more tricky when we are dealing with intangible benefits. Saving Changes...
