Identifying and Realising Project Benefits - A Cross-national Comparison of Benefits Management Practices.

Phase 3: Recommendations for Improvement.

Research conducted by:

Professor Terry Williams, University of Hull, Professor Mike Bourne, Cranfield University, Pippa Bourne, Cranfield University, Dr Richard Kirkham, The University of Manchester, Professor Gordon Masterton, The University of Edinburgh, Professor Paolo Quattrone, The University of Edinburgh, Carolina Toczycka, The University of Edinburgh, Hang Vo, University of Hull

Published: May 2020

The full PMI report is available here.

Summary of the findings

For transparent public scrutiny, benefits should be regarded as of equal importance as cost and schedule; public announcements of cost overruns should always be accompanied with the impact on benefits – quantified and narrative. We have tried to outline the nature of what is commonly thought of as a “benefit”, its changing nature and the difficulty of establishing a single, common and stable value of a benefit. The idea of “benefits” is difficult to pin down, and “benefits” unfold in time and have multiple meanings.

Definitions

There was a practical desire that discourse used commonly understood terms.

We recommend defining processes to define terms. Rather than PMI (for example) defining benefits for all kinds of circumstances, it could specify policies to define processes to identify and continuously assess the validity of temporarily agreed definitions.

Tools

We looked at indications to help design tools to support benefit realisation / change management.

We recommend that tools for benefit management should recognise the impossibility of capturing a “true” permanent representation of a benefit, rather create a communicative space for discussion recognising the “multiplicity” of benefits and their evolution, combining quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Practices should continuously monitor the change in project scope and benefit definition.

Stakeholders

Communication with stakeholders and seeing issues from differing perspectives is important to success ‐ from consultation about benefits early to working with them at implementation.

We recommend communicating with stakeholders in terms to which they relate, often those non‐financial, societal benefits, without which the project may have no enduring value to them. Non‐financial benefits may have been undervalued in the past.

Reviews

The “outside view” is important.

We recommend that there can be value in an independent (maybe embedded) benefits group for the project which keeps benefits in mind but can avoid optimism bias.

Post‐project phase

Benefits are often delivered not by the project but by the “Business as Usual” operational phase using the project’s output products/services. This depends upon behaviours during implementation, the interface between project delivery and operations, and subsequent take‐up of services.

We recommend ongoing review and reporting of benefits and benefit changes post implementation by the permanent organisation that takes over the project output (possibly for larger projects, by independent oversight bodies) and consideration of for how long benefits should be tracked.

Post‐project phase ‐ sponsors

This raises questions about the sponsor.

We recommend when allocating personal responsibilities, such as in SRO letters, consideration of questions such as: Can a project sponsor be responsible for how the output of that project is used? If not, who can be, and what processes are required to transfer responsibilities? Or are we choosing the wrong project sponsors?

Changes to benefits

Changes to benefits happen throughout a project. Some arise because different lenses are used to look at a project‐ changing perceptions of benefits while not affecting the project itself. For all sectors, but perhaps particularly IT and Transformation (where benefits are less precisely defined up‐front), change will occur in the context of the project and in societal perceptions and political imperatives, so the definition of benefits needs to evolve.

We recommend that processes be developed that recognise this. Agile approaches can be beneficial. “Test and learn” approaches provide immediate learning.

Narratives and non‐quantitative benefits

Narratives are useful to describe hoped‐for benefits and needs at the outset as the project evolves, and benefits ex‐post. Quantitative descriptions of benefits can be used to generate narratives, and as in every narrative, this can mean different things to people, and can be rewritten.

We recommend the use of narratives, which provide a useful means of expressing benefits, and that care is taken to avoid the over‐reliance on benefits that can be quantified.

Final note

As academics and practitioners converge on the “multiple” nature of benefits, the design of tools and practices should reflect the rejection of a positivistic search seeking to represent and measure benefits and therefore embrace their fluidity, change and need for continuous scrutiny of what a benefit is and could become in different contexts (e.g. different interested parties, phases of the projects etc.). These implications might appear academic, but the implications are increasingly recognised by practice, such as the Daily Telegraph (2020) calling for the implications to be reflected in the UK Treasury Green Book.