Tracking benefits in your complex, fluid & unique project.

Tracking benefits in your complex, fluid and unique project

The overarching goal for any project should be to maximise the value it yields to the organisation. For the project manager and team, that means remaining focused on this goal no matter what the obstacles. Fundamentally, this all boils down to maintaining a view of the drivers of the original business case.

Yet how do you track the benefits? When it comes to capital projects, your benefits are there to be seen – the bridge is being built or the building is going up. However, for most digital transformation projects, the benefits come only????after implementation, sometimes years later. The project itself does not deliver the benefits; instead it delivers a new way of working, and the new tools and processes which will deliver the benefits.

In these cases, benefits start accruing only after the project manager has left the project. Nevertheless, benefit tracking can still be can be measured in terms of schedule, costs, resourcing, deliverables and quality. When projects start running in an agile manner, the slicing concept comes into play – one is able to unravel a project into slices or compartments. For example, one would slice a two-year project into two year-long sections, then into six-monthly sections, then quarters, months and finally fortnightly slices. A truly agile project will show itself to be delivering actual value and benefits in each of these slices, in accordance with the size of the slice. At each stage, you will be able to track the lessons learned and gain insights into the parameters that will enhance benefit realisation, both of which will influence the scope of subsequent ‘slices’ of the project.

Where this approach is taken, the business manager and the project manager need to work closely to ensure that the project is actually delivering what it needs to in each unit of time, from the week or two-week period and upward.

In addition, in your overall portfolio, be aware of the low-hanging fruit – the things you can pull forward without upsetting the applecart over the long term. Rather than adopting a ‘big bang’ approach, with a massive project scope and time frame, identify where you can use pilot projects or pilot implementation to prove the concept and drive adoption in the organisation.

However, you will need to set the standards or baselines and, importantly, the expectations from the start. Companies often underestimate how difficult it can be to set baselines. An organisation may want a 10% improvement in sales call success, but may never have had the tools in place to measure sales call success. How would they know if they have achieved the 10% improvement?

Early on, decide what your success factors will be, so that when you are executing the project there are concrete measurables with which to assess success. And be prepared to make sacrifices. It may happen that you have to take a hit in one area to propel the project to the next level. Ask yourself, is the loss or the gain you stand to make a hardcore quantitative benefit, or perhaps a qualitative part of the process that you need to get through in order to synthesise all the other benefits that have gone before?

Benefits tracking is essential to project success, requiring a range of tools and approaches that vary according to the project and sector. MAC Consulting has the expertise to manage or guide you through the process, no matter how long or short the project, or the nature of the sector. Using clear and verifiable measurements, we keep your project on track, equipping you with the skills to ensure that future projects impart maximum value to your organisation.?