Benefits realization

Projects are approved on promised benefits and closed on delivered scope. The gap between those two sentences is why organizations repeat expensive mistakes with confidence.

Define benefits so they can be disproved

A benefit that cannot fail to be claimed is not a benefit. Each needs a measure, a current baseline, a target, a date by which it should appear, and an owner who is accountable after the project closes — usually the operational owner, not the project manager, who has moved on.

Distinguish honestly:

• Cashable — the budget actually reduces. Someone can point at the line.
• Non-cashable — time is released. Real, but only becomes value if that time is redeployed to something that matters, which is a separate management act nobody schedules.
• Cost avoidance — a future cost does not occur. Legitimate and unverifiable, so treat claims sceptically.
• Non-financial — risk reduction, compliance, experience. Often the actual reason. Say so rather than manufacturing a financial number nobody believes.

The most common failure is a business case padded with non-cashable savings presented as though the budget will fall. It will not, and the credibility loss lands on the next case.

Baseline before you change anything

A baseline captured after go-live is not a baseline. Measure first, and record how it was measured — by the time anyone checks, the method will be disputed and nobody will remember.

Tracking happens after the project ends

Benefits appear months after delivery, when the project team has dispersed and attention has moved. This is precisely why it does not happen, and why it needs to be owned by the operational line and scheduled at approval rather than intended.

Set review points at meaningful intervals — ninety days, six months, a year — and hold them regardless of what the answer looks like.

Post-implementation review worth the hour

Two questions: did the benefits appear, and would we make the same decision knowing what we now know?

Include estimation accuracy, since the systematic bias in an organization's estimates is one of the most useful things it can know about itself and is discoverable only by looking back.

Make it non-punitive or it will produce nothing true. A review that damages careers produces reviews that say the project was a success. Feed the findings back to pmo:portfolio-governance and finance:capital-allocation, which are where the next set of approvals gets made.

Never

• Approve a case whose benefits have no owner after the project closes.
• Present non-cashable savings as budget reduction.
• Baseline after implementation.
• Run a review that punishes honesty.