Benefits Management and Benefits Realisation

Benefits Management and Benefits Realisation are priorities for public sector – too much money has been spent, for too long, with no evidence that the taxpayer (or anyone else) is getting value for money.
We might be – but with no way to find out, we get suspicious.

Benefits management strategy

Benefits Approach

Benefits Tracking Process

Why write a BMS?
Writing about how you will approach Benefits, and what your strategy is, may seem like an unnecessary distraction from getting on with the actual Benefits Realisation.
Don’t climb the wrong ladder
But as Stephen Covey described [i] , don’t get to the top, look out, and say “whoops, climbed over the wrong wall”.
We don’t want to measure for the sake of measuring, but so that we can adjust our course to reach the right destination.
We don’t even want to measure any old benefit, we want to prioritise the most important benefits, the

solutions to pressing problems
achievements that really make a difference

Writing a strategy
Writing a strategy helps you to think about:

WHY you are making this investment in change, what you are trying to achieve

HOW you will demonstrate that you are on track, or discover that you aren’t, and change course
WHAT you will measure in order to find this
WHEN you need to start – do you need to prepare well in advance, and when do you expect to see results?
WHERE  will responsibility for benefits realisation, and for benefits measurement, reside, and how will they link together
WHO [ii] takes responsibility

Before you get too excited
It’s tempting to write an all-encompassing Benefits Management Strategy, including Strategy (what it aligns with), Approach (how you will plan), and Tracking Process (how you will measure).
But these are each important at different points in the project.

The Benefits Management Strategy
 is needed during the diagnosis stage (typically equivalent to Project Initiation).  It documents how the project aligns to the strategic objectives of the organisation or local health and care economy, scope, and the benefits realisation processes to be used.
MSP [iii] is focussed on Benefits Realisation, and the format of the Benefits Management Strategy described here is MSP compliant, if a little more practical and applicable.
The Benefits Approach
Addresses the specifics of how you will define benefits (whether for a single organisation or across different organisations), prioritise them, plan the dependencies which show what needs to be done to realise these benefits, and document everything.
The Benefits Approach evolves throughout the planning stage of the project.  It makes sense to keep it as a separate document so you aren’t tempted to keep re-writing the Benefits Management Strategy and your reviewers don’t need to keep reviewing it.
The Benefits Tracking Process
Just as the Benefits Approach evolves during the planning stage, so Benefits Tracking will evolve during service delivery.  Of course you need to define up front what you intend to monitor, and prepare a baseline.  At the same time you must be open to change.  We look at Benefits Tracking here

[i] Stephen Covey, 7 habits of highly effective people.  Stephen actually wrote in “Putting First Things First “'It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success, only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall'

[ii] Rudyard Kipling “the elephant’s child” I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew, their names are What and Why and When, and Where and How and Who

[iii] OGC Managing Successful Programmes