Dear friends
Are you using a Benefits Approach? How does this compare with other organisations?
Steve Jenner (the driving force behind the development of UK Criminal Justice System IT approach to Portfolio and Benefits Management, that was referred to by Gartner, the European Commission's economics of e-Government project and by the UK Government report to the OEDC as "UK Best Practice" and which won the 2007 Civil Service award for Financial Management). Steve was described by the UK Government CIO as "the rottweiller of benefits management"
Steve is looking at how organisations approach benefits, and in the spirit of understanding properly, wants to ask organisations to rate themselves. He's created a survey on SurveyMonkey(a secure site approved by US and UK governments for surveys of this nature) and as it only takes 20 minutes or so to complete, please mouse over to the survey and have a look. If you fill in contact details we'll email you for an address to send a copy of the guidebook "Managing the Portfolio, Realising the Benefits" on the CJS IT implementation referred to above.

Have fun!
Hugo

Click Here to take survey

To talk to most people, just about anything is more natural! "We can't do that, we've gone soft".

Making things complicated

Okay, so I'll have to harden my feet up, but it really doesn't seem too unnatural to run barefoot.  Apart from anything else, humans have been running bare feet for 220,000 years; we've only been running in fancy running shoes for about 50 years.

But of course, running barefoot makes me a nutter.

Enjoy this video and discussion

"What about all the injuries?" Yes I've been thinking about that. When did we start getting injuries from running? Could it be around the same time that we started getting fancy shoes? Man is born to run, but running in fancy running shoes is very different from running in bare feet, and once you’ve picked up bad habits it is difficult to go back. That isn't to say that I could immediately switch to barefoot running, and expect to be injury free.   For example, we've stepped up the performance that we expect; we’re pushing our bodies harder than they were designed to be pushed (Olympic and Commonwealth games records are constantly being broken), and injuries are almost certainly a product of pushing our bodies, rather than of the equipment we use.

What I'm getting at, is that sometimes we overcomplicate things. In the interests of selling a product, someone decided that you had to have running shoes. Everybody jumped on that same bandwagon (after all, they had a big advertising budget, and the barefoot brigade just carried on being barefoot and not shouting about it), and pretty soon, the only way to run was to run in a pair of £100 running shoes.

To take another example: remember that Fisher space pen? A private company spent $1 million (when $1million was a lot of money) developing a pen that could write in space – upside down, in a vacuum, underwater, anywhere! NASA, and the US space program, hailed it as a triumph! Meanwhile the Russian cosmonauts, so I'm told, used a pencil – upside down, in a vacuum, underwater, anywhere?!

The same applies to project management, performance management, and benefits realisation in general.

How should I know?  Why should you listen to me?

I've been working on business cases and return on investment propositions for the last 21 years. I was a salesman for a lot of that time – so I had to do it well, otherwise we couldn't pay the mortgage!

I now work with public service, and I develop business cases on the basis of the social benefits – improvement in quality of life, clinical outcomes, benefits to wider society. With the organisation and their stakeholders, we set out to understand how much quality of life is worth:

• do you go to hospital fewer times? How much would that cost the government or your insurance company?
• Do you take less time off work? How much does that cost one of our stakeholders (let's face it, we aren’t so concerned with how much it is worth to someone who isn't part of our cost equation)?
• Do you contribute your local community, family, country? How much is that worth in something we can take to the bank?

Are you trying to achieve new things, but faced with limited resources? Are you doing something that you know makes sense, makes better use of resources and delivers better outcomes, but you can't put your argument in the terms that make sense to people who hold the purse strings? Do you want to make a difference to the world, but simply can't get the resources to make it happen?

Let me offer a word of advice. You probably didn't recognise the feet at the top of this article (let's face it, it was a photograph of feet). Here’s the whole picture, and that’s me! If you're wondering why don't look too happy, this is the finish line – 26 miles and some after the start line at Kielder in October. Of course, if you like, you can sponsor my next marathon (London marathon, 29 April 2011). But I would most like you to think about what you're trying to achieve, for the good of society, and how you're going to get those resources and investment.

The word of advice? KISS

How to make your BMS work for you, instead of you having to work for it

When all else fails and the guidance doesn't guide, here's how to do it
You want a BMS that works - that everyone can agree on; that's sufficiently detailed that you know what you're going to do next, but at the same time sufficiently high level that it isn't hostage to circumstance; that is meaningful; that identifies real benefits.
You've read the guidance on the internet, from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), you've ploughed through Benefits Approaches and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), and you're thoroughly confused.
That's how I started. That's why I wrote this, so you can benefit from my mistakes.
What needs to be in a BMS
To some extent it depends who you are writing it for, but assuming that you're writing for NHS or other government body you'll want a formal document which complies with a number of conventions - it will be acceptable and accepted.
Accepted
Wouldn't it be great if the document that was accepted by the board was also useful? How can you write it briefly enough to be useful, at the same time formally enough to be acceptable?
Useful
What does a Benefits Management Strategy need?
A brief description of why the programme or project has been set up - what problem was it trying to solve? Although you will identify a great many other benefits, the original purpose is unlikely to change
The overall strategic aims of the organisation or workstream, that the programme needs to contribute towards. Although organisations and workstreams do change their strategic aims, it's considerably less frequently than programmes do.
Some of the interdependencies - what does the programme rely on, what enablers are in place, and also what will it (in overview) enable other projects to do? As an example, a typical IM&T project delivers nothing of value. It's only when people make use of the equipment and information, and in so doing change the way they do things, that benefits start to be delivered. At the same time many IM&T projects require the training, the information etc to be in place before they can deliver the project. Sometimes the enablers and dependencies are within the overall programme, but more often than not they are outside.
It doesn't deliver any benefits
As indicated for IM&T projects in the last para, very few programmes, or the projects within them, deliver any benefits themselves. Benefits actually occur once people start to use the deliverables from the project; this is the Business As Usual (BAU) phase and is usually outside of the programme. So the strategy needs to link through to an Approach and a Tracking process (these are given in separate pages - [back to Benefits management strategy page] to find them).
Example Benefits Management Strategy (BMS)
Document purposeBrief description of what any approvals panel is expected to do with this document, and what users are expected to do
AudienceIf you are being very formal, then whether this is an internal document or due to be shared with a wider audience. If internal, then internal to what?
Overview of Project or ProgrammeYou could easily copy and paste this from other descriptions of the project. With a BMS that could end up only 2-3 pages long, pasting in 1 whole page of overview of project might seem excessive, so if you can shorten it then do so
Alignment to strategic aimsList the strategic aims of the organisation or group of organisations/ workstream that your project has to contribute towards and align with. I know the OGC guidance says you should list the benefits of your project and how they align with the strategic goals - however it's my experience that the benefits of your project are likely to change, so be wary of creating work for yourself
Interdependencies of the project or programmeHighlighted above, what the project is dependent on and it's enablers; what changes it will make that other projects, programmes or services are dependent on. For an IM&T project, what projects, programmes or services will make use of the final outcomes of your project, and what will they achieve?
Accompanying DocumentsEssentially the Benefits Management Approach and Benefits Tracking Process, though you may wish to list other project documents
Glossary of TermsYou will probably have used a number of terms in the BMS which are specific to a Benefits Approach, and which won't be familiar to a general audience. Because they are specific to a Benefits Approach they might or might not have a definition in the overall Programme Glossary of Terms, but it's worth including them here
See also
Benefits Management Strategy
Benefits Approach
Benefits Tracking Process
to carry on understanding the Benefits Management Strategy, Go back to the Benefits Management Strategy

If the Benefits Management Strategy is the high-level and relatively unchanging document, then with the Benefits Approach and Benefits Tracking process we get down to the nitty gritty of doing the doing.
Identifying Benefits
Profiling
Creating a High-Level plan and getting signup
Quantifying, and getting signup
Summarising and Detailing
Planning the realisation
the Benefits Realisation Plan
The Benefits Approach is about a whole lot more detail on how you will tackle this
Benefits Planning is the process
The Benefits Approach is the document
Benefits Realisation is the progress you make on your project or programme
A flexible document
The Benefits Approach will have to change to take account of the development of the project. You will have noticed that it hardly ever runs smoothly, that there are usually changes. This also applies to Benefits - the ones you thought of at the start, and the ways you chose to realise them, may prove impractical and you have to change. The Benefits Approach is the ideal place to make these changes.
See also
Benefits Management Strategy
Benefits Approach
Benefits Tracking Process
to carry on understanding the Benefits Management Strategy, Go back to the Benefits Management Strategy

Benefits will be realised once you develop a habit of benefits tracking, of measuring how much you are achieving.
Measurement, and in particular measuring achievement of benefits, is one of the most satisfying things anyone can do. Unfortunately most people think of measurement as a pain, something done for someone else, a complete waste of time. You set out to achieve something with this project, but you won't know if you are achieving it, if you aren't measuring. More to the point, if you know where you are succeeding and where you aren't, you can adjust the programme or project as you go along.
The Benefits Tracking process is the plan or definition of how you are going to do this:
Who is going to perform the measurements (I'd recommend the person nearest to service delivery)
Where they will get the information from (it can come from organisational information sources, external sources, or of course measuring what's happening: How many, how much, what quality)
How the measurements will be processed after they've been collected, so as to show what you want to see
Who will receive reports of what's been achieved (I'd recommend certainly staff and stakeholders, whereas usually reports only go up to the Workstream Board or PCT board where they won't be read)
What authority those collecting the measures have - are there any sanctions if the information is not forthcoming?
the Measurement strategy
What do you want to know? What are the primary benefits: this is what you want to know. How are you going to find this out? All of this information can be collected in a [Benefits Framework workshop].
Once you've identified the benefits, then you need to work out what you CAN measure which will show you whether you're making progress, and what's EASY to measure. You'll also need to work out what you need to do with the results of your measurement so you can tell what progress you are making. For example, if your benefit is to reduce the amount to time spent inputting data manually, you might want to measure:
Time spent inputting data manually (but do you know when most people multi-task)
Amount of data added to the system per day/week
Total pay bill for the admin (data inputting) staff
In each case the figure is pretty useless all by itself - you need to be able to compare the current status with the situation before or when the project started, and you need to know that you want less time spent inputting data, to know whether the constraint on the amount of data added is because there's only that amount of data or if staff resources have been the bottleneck. How much data per £ spent on salary, for example.
The Benefits Tracking Document
will contain a number of headings with detail completed, to define the way that Benefits will be measured and reported. Suggested structure:
A statement to the effect that this is a dynamic document that will need to change as the project evolves
Repeating the Benefits identified for the Programme or Project (this section will need updating when the benefits change)
A matrix showing which measurement techniques and sources of information will be used to demonstrate achievement of which benefits
Who's responsible for:
Performing the measurements
Processing the measurements into meaningful results
Preparing reports
Who gets to see and approve the reports
What happens when results are excellent and benefits realised. What happens when benefits aren't realised.

An example will be posted shortly
See also
Benefits Management Strategy
Benefits Approach
Benefits Tracking Process
Go back to the Benefits Management Strategy

What is the best way to measure if NHS is cost-effective?

Measure performance over time?  

The blog called "Liberal Conspiracy" did this, and some of the replies are quite stunning!  The gist of the article is that spending went up more quickly under Margaret Thatcher than it is planned to under David Cameron, even though the need is growing at a faster rate.  The gist of the comments is that the world falls into two camps, those that want to defend NHS, and those that want to attack it.  In truth, the demographics of England (many more people living to frail old age, rich enough to kill ourselves) is changing faster than NHS can change, so it is difficult to compare performance over time.

Compare UK NHS to other countries?

There is a sterling report by the Commonwealth fund from 2010, which does this, and demonstrates a number of interesting points brought out in the Tax Research UK blog on the subject from June 2011.

This detailed piece of research shows the NHS for what it is - an exceptionally cost-effective way to deliver heatlhcare to the nation, with the corresponding benefits of 

• contribution to the economy - the most common cause of personal bancruptcy in USA is paying health care bills.  People have to put aside money just in case they need medical attention, with a result they don't buy US goods as much as they could.  With NHS we spend freely (some might say a little too freely) and the support the economy.  Now if only it were British goods and services we bought?
• contribution to productivity - keeping people healthy and in their place of employment helps employers because they have the continuity and retain experience.  People aren't a commodity you buy in the market.  Many countries (USA included) suffer because once someone is sick, they often drop out of productive employment
• contribution to happiness - being sick isn't fun.  It costs the nation in welfare payments and disability payments.  But it also has a massive cost in terms of mental health.  The aim of our nation should be to increase happiness

Compare UK NHS to the World?

A more recent study (reported in the Guardian August 7 2011) compares UK NHS to a larger number of health systems.  The study was published in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, which is known for its impartiality.

The study demonstrates the importance of committed staff, as UK is able to deliver better care, for lower cost in terms of both £ per head of population (or US $ as the currency of comparison) and as a % of GDP.  Obviously our health spend is higher than some countries, and people will go on about Japanese legendary long life.

Actually, I have a question to ask about the legendary long life of Japanese people on their diet of raw fish.

Last year, the oldest person in the world (who was thought to live in Japan) was found not to be.  His son and daughter in law had been claiming his pension for the last 30 years after he'd died.  Then the Japanese state pension authorities estimated that perhaps 1/3 of all pensioners were not actually alive.  This number has to be big enough to change the average life expectancy?  Maybe the Japanese don't live longer, they just pretend they do for pension purposes?

Anyway, this allows us to mimic what the government does and compare UK to USA.  UK compares rather well to USA - with GDP spend on health at 9.3% (compared with USA at 15%), and better outcomes in terms of life expectancy at birth and healthy years.

But NHS spend is government spend therefore people don't have a choice

This is an important argument.  Those that pay the biggest taxes should have a choice what they are spent on, and if these same people decide that they want to spend their own money on private healthcare provision or private education provision, why should their money be allocated by some faceless bureaucrat, to help people who don't or won't look after themselves?

The comparisons above explain this best.

Healthcare is a necessity, just as education, enforcement, logistics are vital to any successful Western economy.  It doesn't matter who spends the money (whether you pay for it yourself or whether government taxes you and then spends the money on your behalf), the money will leave your pocket and you will make use of healthcare.

So the question now is - what is the most efficient way of getting healthcare?

Well in USA, 15% of every $ dollar $ of GDP goes on healthcare.  Since we know that only about 70% of the population have access to healthcare, this means that healthcare per person receiving healthcare is exceptionally expensive.  I've certainly heard of insurance premiums for a healthy 40-year-old non-smoking male around $8000 per year.  That is money that has left your pocket.

In UK, 9.3% of every $ dollar (because we're comparing like with like) goes on healthcare.  This is about $3000 per adult, more when they are old and less when they are a healthy 40-year-old.  Obviously they take the money when you are working, because it comes out of taxes.

BUT I hear you cry - BUT my private health insurer only charges me a premium of £600-800 ($900 - 1300).  Yes, but when you read the small print you find that private healthcare ONLY covers you for a few things, basically the cost of better hotel services.  You usually only get private treatment (ie bumped up the waiting list) if the waiting list is longer than the NHS maximum, therefore for most things you will use NHS care.  You go into an NHS hospital for your treatment, but convalesc in the private hospital which is little more than a hotel.  The private insurer provides NO cover for emergency or for maternity at this price.  Of course they can do it more cheaply.  What is surprising, given that, is that so much of our money goes into private healthcare premiums - of the total 9.3% of GDP spend on health, 7.1% is from tax and 2.1% (I presume there's some rounding error) is private!

So does the NHS need reform?

Of course NHS needs reform.  How do you think it came to be so efficient and effective, if it were not always going through a process of review and reform.  But as the saying goes "all improvement requires change, but not all change is an improvement" and this applies most strongly to top-down change in NHS.

TSRC works to empower individuals and teams at the front line, to make the changes needed in response to the changes in the environment around them (changes in needs, changes in technology and medical understanding, changes in expectations).  We help to ensure that back office functions do what they are meant to do - support the front-office functions.  We help your own staff to create value, to understand what about what they do creates value and how to do more, and we help you to design priorities and strategies that provide a firm foundation for health and care delivery.  This applies whether you are NHS, public sector, CVS or for-profit.

John Thorp's book "the information paradox" is probably the foundation on which future benefits realisation has been based. Although it is based around IT projects (notoriously, with a 70% "failure" rate), there is much that can be applied to all environments.

John thesis on key concepts: fundamental definitions such as

The programme is a blended investment containing all the steps required to deliver business results
The portfolio enables decisions to be made about the constraints of budget, team capability, organisational capability, and organisational ability/capacity to absorb change; a portfolio approach also enables portfolio manager to understand the different productive (and destructive) interdependencies; sequential, overlapping, competing, and bottlenecks.

Using full cycle governance ensures that the organisation structure is in place to make the right decisions,and the use of stage gates ensures progressive commitment of resources in risky situations

The conditions apply in IT as much as anywhere else: activist accountability (that those people driving the change are accountable for its success); relevant measurement (measurement that make sense to people, and that demonstrate progress or lack of it); and proactive management of change, i.e. recognising the five components that are vital to any change: BTOPP -- Business, Technical, Organisational, People, Process.
 
Dimensions and drivers of change
The key drivers, or measures for any project, should certainly include: alignment, financial worth, and risk. This is implicit in project management and benefits analysis, but "Information Paradox" maybe the first place that it is actually written down.

Alignment - does the project or programme contribute to the strategic objectives of the organisation or unit?  If it doesn't, why are we planning to do it?  If it represents a new opportunity, then should the organisation include this (or "seeking new opportunities") in its strategic objectives?  To what extent does it align?
Financial worth - the amount of effort put into benefits analysis should reflect the financial worth and the risk.  A low cost/low risk project such as moving one department up two floors should not warrant the same effort as a major project to buy a new office building and move the whole organisation.  To some extent, the financial worth is an indicator of the benefits, although there will often be additional benefits (eg laying the foundations for reduced costs or increased opportunities) over and above the financial worth
Risk - balanced with Financial worth the level of risk MUST dictate the approach.  A higher risk project should have more scrutiny and should be approached with more care - the use of stage gates (see above) ensures that only what the organisation can afford to lose is actually committed at each stage, and the project can be stopped quickly and with minimum exposure if it fails.

 
Techniques
John Thorp introduces the techniques that will confuse under different names:

Results chain (understanding links, and dynamic management -- this will come to be developed into the Benefits Dependency Network)
Value management (evaluation and selection of projects and programmes, and ongoing portfolio management)

 
Making it happen
John Thorp's book is certainly practical. The concluding two chaptersdeal with the practicalities of putting in place a structure, the measurement system, and making use of the techniques to apply benefits analysis and benefits realisation in new projects; followed by the last chapter on introducing benefits management to the organisation.
A note on the second edition
 

During the last government and the Thatcher one that preceded it, government did its best to take as much government spend off balance sheet (ie so it wouldn't show) through a series of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) deals.  Yes we know that we, and our children, and our children's children will be paying the bills for decades.
In the meantime, here's a methodology to make sure that it doesn't happen again http://www.bereal.salford.ac.uk/index.htm
This describes a Benefits Realisation methodology that isn't new (it's a combination of most of the well-known existing benefits realisaton methodologies, some of which are widely discredited so don't get too excited) but it is gaining credibility with OGC which could be valuable.
Worth a look?  Let me know!

I went to a talk last night with the local APM (Association of Project Managers) branch - well worth it!

Sue Vowler, who was one of the pilots and early adopters for PRINCE2, wrote the book on P3O (published 2008), and explained the thinking behind it.

P3O is based on the very best of principles - how can we take organisations which struggle to keep up with the ever-changing world and help them to deliver faster, more consistently, for lower cost?
Sue gave the example of Vodafone, one of the companies which kicked it off.  23% of new projects succeeded, and the time to bring a new product to market was between 9 and 18 months.  They decided to standardise processes, to use best practice not just when the right person was in place as project manager, but every time, and to ensure that business cases were reviewed in the context of both the business and the other initiatives underway, rather than each in isolation on its own merits.  They changed the business completely - 80% of projects succeeded, and new product to market time came down to 3 months!

So what is a P3O?

Essentially, Sue said, companies do the right thing, and/or do things right.  They might do a lot of things right, but they might be doing the wrong things - result is failure.  Lots of effort into auditing and processes and templates, high quality, but simply going in the wrong direction or going in too many inconsistent directions.
They might be doing the right things, but only sometimes, and sometimes they know what they should do but don't do it.
To succeed, organisations and people need to both do the right thing, and do it right.

Which means three functions for the P3O:

1. Centre of Excellence - what are the right ways to do things?  Best practice, templates, knowledge, training, support (but avoid the "template police")
2. Monitoring, advising and sanctioning - the people who say "your next step is" or "this project is failing, let's stop it".  This group need to be sufficiently senior that they can advise the Board and Executives what should go and what should stay; they need to be able to change a culture of "he who shouts loudest", to prioritise the programmes and projects that deliver the business objectives and make sure they happen, and to arrange the remaining projects into an order in case some money turns up from an unexpected source.  This is portfolio management, essentially
3. Tactical Capacity - a pool of people trained to implement things the standard way who can step in and manage projects or programmes where needed or support if that is needed

What does this mean for you and me?

Firstly: this process can be applied to any type of organisation, the approach just has to be appropriate.  So a small organisation might just have a couple of people who co-ordinate all of the project managers in the organisation, without taking them away from where they are.

A larger organisation may decide to locate all of the project and programme managers in the same office, preferably near to the Chief Exec (who they should report to), and best of all to put all of their dashboards (red / amber / green and actions needed to get to success) on the walls so the Chief Exec and any staff coming into meetings can look and say "oh yes I know how to sort that one out"

A Multi-national or large government department can implement a hub-and-spoke, with a central office coordinating, and local offices by function or by region.

How do you know where you are on the Maturity Model?

The first question to ask is "how much do you spend on projects?".  Most organisations know down to the last penny how much they spend on Business as Usual (BAU), and how to save money.  But they often don't have a clue how much they spend on projects, and that is often why most of it is going to waste.

"How many project managers do you have?  How many portfolio managers? Do you use a single project / programme management methodology or lots of different ones?  Do you have too many templates and do people not use them?  Who do the project managers report to? (if IT Director then you are hardly out of the starting gate)"

Sue reminded us that most organisations score 1 out of 5 (the worst) for maturity on Benefits Management, and it agrees with my own assessment of most of the organisations I've encountered - but then if they didn't need help they wouldn't ask me in.  Having said that, to recognise you need help puts you between 2 and 3 on the maturity model for Benefits Realisation/ Business Benefits Management.

I hope that this quick overview is useful and look forward to comments - Hugo

Always a delight to hear Steve Jenner (CIO for the Criminal Justice Department, and advisor to the Cabinet Office of UK Government) speak, but I've heard him a number of times and I was afraid there would be nothing new. I was surprised and pleased!
Nobody actually realises benefits
Steve berated us for not realising benefits from projects and programmes. He illustrated the problem: that we overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs and timescales:
In the UK, HM Treasury concludes that "there is a demonstrated, systematic tendency" to overestimate benefits.
Flyvbjerg goes further - Forecasts are "highly, systematically and significantly misleading (inflated)" (ie people seem to be doing it on purpose)
Whereas Kahneman is a little kinder - describing it as a "delusional optimism". Kahneman does state later in the same paper that this tendency would be described as "lying" in normal society and that those who write business cases should be put in jail!
 
Steve asked what should be done? 

There are plenty of frameworks, including Benefits Management Methodology in USA and the Treasury Green Book and OGC http://www.ogc.gov.uk/ structures in UK. Are they being implemented correctly? Well Steve ran a survey of Project Managers interested in Benefits Management across UK, USA and Australia, and most of the responses indicated that they either never managed benefits properly, or were at an early stage. That left a few who had replied extremely positively so he followed them up with personal interviews. Perhaps predictably, they had been over optimistic in their replies and when he asked to come and visit, the excuses began "well we've only just started and if you could come back in a year..." , "what we meant when we said..." etc.
Only one organisation, DVLA, invited Steve to visit, and they are the same solitary case study that is given on the OGC web site from 2003.
References

Realising Benefits from Government ICT Investment - a fool's errand? - Steve Jenner 2009 Academic Publishing International Ltd http://academic-publishing.org/Stephen_Jenner.htm
'Transforming Government and Public Services - Realising Benefits through Project Portfolio Management' - Stephen Jenner 2010, Gower, http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409401636

Choosing the right FABRIC - a Framework for Performance Information - HM Treasury 2001 http://archive.treasury.gov.uk/performance_info/fabric.html

Treasury Green Book Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government 2003 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/data_greenbook_index.htm

 
Peter Glynne (a P3 Consultant (Portfolio, Programme and Project) with Deliotte seconded into OGC http://www.ogc.gov.uk/ - not representing either in this talk) had a view on how to make benefits work.
Benefits is not Process, Benefits is Behaviour
Peter talked about the Maturity Model for the organisation, especially as it relates to benefits http://www.ogc.gov.uk/introduction_to_programmes_managing_benefits.asp. He reminded us that so many public sector projects suffer from frequent changes of personnel, so the SRO (Senior Responsible Officer) who initially accepts the benefits may be gone before the first review; worse than this, they probably expect to be gone, so they can accept any number of benefits and then blame their successor for not being able to realise them. The incoming SRO usually refuses to accept any but the most easily achievable benefits and blames the first for being optimistic. And neither actually delivers any benefits because that is the responsibility of the Service Delivery or Business as Usual (BAU) team, who often don't know how to deliver benefits when they are so busy delivering the service.
For SRO you could substitute any project officer, including the Benefits Manager - turnover for Benefits Owners (as individuals) is as fast as anybody else.
Peter suggested that the Benefits Owner should always be a Business Manager, though I'm not sure this will solve the problem. We can expect under this new government to see a lot more scrutiny on financial benefits during the planning stage, but the Treasury Green Book exhorts us to learn from the past, and the past tells us that once a project has got past the approvals stage, nobody will bother to review what was actually achieved!
 References

Benefits Management: A strategic business skill for all seasons - Association for Project Management 2009 www.apm.org.uk/download.asp?fileID=1443
Office of Government Commerce - www.ogc.gov.uk
Association of Project Management APM www.apm.org.uk

Deepak Chopra once described Jack Canfield and Victor Hansen's "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books as 'Not Motivational' 1
Motivation is something imposed from outside, the traditional 'rocket up the backside', the manager or change agent pushing people with threats and bribes to change the way they work.
Of course motivation can help an organisation to improve, to cut costs, to increase output and trading surplus, but it's hard work.  The Minney approach to change in services for the public good is rather different.
Inspired
Inspiration comes from the inside.  it goes on working long after a motivational force is removed.  
We come to work to do a good job, to make a difference for the people we serve, be they patients (health), service users (care), or the general public (municipal services).
sometimes very simple things, such as explaining the strategic objectives and a department's contributions to them, and then each team's place and contribution, can reignite that inspiration that first brought people to public service. Sometimes engagement is simple.
Sometimes it takes a little more effort; the Minney approach recognises this need for flexibility.
The desire to change for the better
too much change is imposed from the outside, and meets resistance.  Too much effort goes into managing change, to deciding "what needs to change" and "who needs to be changed", and then imposing it by fair means or foul.
We've had a lot of success with home-grown change; aligning teams to the overall strategic objectives of the organisation or health community, so they not only create change in their own teams (cost-cutting, productivity, new ways of working, new care pathways), but they measure and report and are constantly realigning with the ever-changing strategic objectives and adjusting their ways of working to achieve the best outcomes.
Would you rather
let your people feel inspired to change for themselves to deliver the KPIs, the services, to meet the needs of your population?
would you like to reduce not just management costs but also resentment of management?
would you like your change to be common sense and led by the professionals?

Footnotes
1 Deepak went on to say that "Chicken Soup for the Soul" are in fact inspirational.  

Earned Value Management -- and return on investment -- what it means for the public good
Earned Value Management is not a new concept -- it's been around, but often not properly implemented, since the 1950s.
But what actually is it?
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a combination of continually realising benefits and performance managing a project.
With EVM, you recognise the value of each deliverable throughout the project life cycle (i.e. the value of each stage of the project). This means that; not only can you tell how much of the project budget and time has been spent, but you can also tell whether you're on track to deliver -- in a scientific manner, rather than the rule of thumb.
So what good does that actually do?
Instead of just having one magnificent prize (the big shiny thing) at the end of a project, we have clearly defined sub prizes along the way. And because they have planned values (PV) attached, people can see how much progress is being made. Put simply, Earned Value (EV) is where the Planned Value (PV, a realistic assigned value on the basis of the benefits expected) has been completed.
By using Earned Value, you can show something more important than "we've delivered a big shiny thing" -- he can show what that “big shiny thing” is for. Planned Value can include the impact, or benefit, you get when you deliver this component.
For example: preparing a job specification does not of itself deliver any benefit; but without a job specification, a new staff role can't proceed, which probably prevents a new service. Therefore, we assign a Planned Value to the work plan specification which recognises how important this deliverable is. Then the Planned Value becomes an Earned Value once it has been "delivered".
Of course the main constraint on Earned Value Management (EVM) is that the sum total of all the Earned Values of each sub prize (EVsub-project or PVcompleted sub-project) cannot exceed the total value of the benefits of the project (the realistic value of all the benefits together).

Or for the Earned Value at any single point in the project:

This means the Planned Values have to be assigned sensibly, because the Earned Value at any point in the project represents completely Planned Values.
There are some excellent graphs on Wikipedia which illustrate this: they are in the public domain so I have linked them here.

Fig 1 illustrates project planning without Earned Value. You know what you are spent against the plan, but you don't know whether this is a good thing, or whether the project has just come to a stop. To credit, the people running this project have estimated Planned Value on the basis of Planned Cost.

Fig 2 illustrates the same thing without actual costs, which shows the project performance and as a basis for performance management.

Fig 3 illustrates the same project, comparing Earned Value with Actual Costs. This way you can see the variance, which is far more useful.

Fig 4 combines all of the above graphs to show everything (effectively performance manage the whole project) on a single sheet of paper. Putting all of the information into one place is usually the most effective way to get everybody "on the same page".

From my personal experience, giving people the means to do a better job very results in a better job: people do what you inspect not what you expect.
Using EVM outside of IT projects
EVM was, perhaps inevitably, originally designed for the US Department of Defence. Where it is used in major government projects in the UK, it is often attached to IT projects.
But I use EVM for non-IT projects, project involving service change and benefits to patients, users, public health, public care, and delivering for the public good.
How can you use this?
One of the biggest challenges for the public good is putting a realistic and sensible value, which is measurable, onto the deliverables from a project. It means that projects are very difficult to manage; it can make it very difficult for someone taking over project partway through; and it almost universally de-motivates staff working on a project.
Perhaps the challenge is to bring in someone with outside experience who can ask the right questions; who can understand the value from inside people's heads, and then define an easy and sensible way of measuring.
With this in place, you can expect more successful delivery, and much better value for your investment.

Identifying the underlying reason for a project can simply be asking the right question.
But is it one question, or five? Why five?
The 5 Whys is a question-asking method used to explore the cause/effect relationships underlying a particular problem. Ultimately, the goal of applying the 5 Whys method is to determine a root cause of a defect or problem
the problem that needs solving (financial crisis, accident)
the benefit to service users (better care, better experience)
the benefit to the whole health and care economy (better health, quality of life, reduced future need for care)
the impact on resources (more for less, more for slightly more, the same for less, stop doing what's no longer needed, address a new need)
the impact on staff (opportunities for career development, for part-time or full-time working, better hours)
the politician's view point (compliance with policy, opportunities to blaze a trail)
the manager's view point (making a difference, ease of management, able to focus on something else when this runs smoothly)
Unless you were involved in setting up the project, it's often a little difficult to diagnose the primary purpose of the project, or the problem that it needs to solve.
Five Whys
Five whys grew out of root cause analysis for identifying why something is going wrong. Five isn't a magic number, you can ask "Why" as many times as you like until you come to the root cause of the problem.
The same applies in finding the primary benefit. The first time ask "Why are we doing this?", then "why is that important?", and so on.

Many factors can play their part in driving a project, and a PEST analysis is a useful tool to understand the environment or culture you are working within.
It helps to prepare for [stakeholder mapping], an absolutely key part of preparing the business case and therefore of preparing the benefits analysis.

Politicalto do with policy rather than necessarily local need, for example national policy which may or may not be directly relevant to the needs of the local health and care economy, but which is a legal requirement (you will lose credibility, or funds, or both if you don't comply)
can include Legal, and Ethical
Economicthere are always more things that could be done, than there are resources to do them
Socialor Socio-cultural, can include Environmental
Technical in the purest sense, Technical can mean any specific technology including the IM&T, but also the buildings, knowledge, legal constraints, contractual, medical, etc
PEST is often used by marketing groups to understand a market, but it is just as relevant here.
Some useful links
http://www.businessballs.com/pestanalysisfreetemplate.htm
http://www.netmba.com/strategy/pest/
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_pest_analysis_Political_Economic_Social_Technological_analysis

IES (Institute for Employment Studies) does groundbreaking research into the impact of employment practice on delivery of effective public services, amongst other things (for a fuller explanation see their web site).
They run fortnightly lunchtime seminars on relevant issues and Tues 8 Oct 08 was the inaugural seminar for this academic year.
Minney.org presented on how to prepare and deliver a business case for public and statutory funding, illustrating some of the difficulties of assembling evidence, and of introducing new roles.

Questions arising included how poorly thought through the introduction of many new roles has been, with funding obtained to train new roles but little thought either to job descriptions or to how these people will be deployed.

There are a lot of similarities between the Social Return on Investment Network (SROI) and Social Accountability Audit (SAA/ SAN)

Both are involved in auditing the benefits of not-for-profit organisations.  This makes them relevant to charities, third sector organisations, social enterprises, public services and public sector organisations.

At this time of austerity in UK, we're being asked to develop organisations capable of delivering public services, which aren't public sector organisations. 

There have been nursing homes, care for the elderly, day centres, help for long-term carers, people with mental health problems, adults with learning disabilities, and private sector and not-for-profit independent organisations for health for a very long time.  These have usually played niche roles, delivering specialist services to a very narrow group of people; but the volume of care they are going to be involved with is about to increase tremendously!

So accounting for value is important. And these two organisations seem to be the leaders for accounting for value.

So what are the differences between them?

There are so many similarities that leading lights from both organisations have written a paper together to show the differences:

• SROI focusses in on the specific benefits of a particular service.  It compares the investment made in the service, with the benefits achieved.  The SROI Report reflects this
• SAA provides a general view of an organisation's approach to social good and doesn't get specific
• SROI tries to assign a financial value to each benefit, and produces an SROI ratio - essentially the number of ££ (or $$) that you get back for each ££ invested
• SAA emphasises that some things cannot have a financial value, and does not produce evidence that a service is "Value for Money"
• SROI involves stakeholders (typically the recipients of the service, regulators, other organisations involved) in the report and all estimates of the value of the benefits are decided by stakeholders
• SAA does not assign values and typically will discuss the audit with stakeholders but not involve them in development

I'm currently getting the SROI accreditation, having been a member of the network (and completed the course successfully) since earlier this year (2010).  I'm considering the SAN (Social Audit Network which provides Social Accountability Audit services) because it represents the other approach.  Am I spreading myself too thinly, or are they complementary?

In June I completed my Social Return on Investment (SROI) course and qualification, but to become a full SROI accredited practitioner I need to prepare an audit of a service using the methodology.

Preparing to interview stakeholders

Workshop with staff

• peer-to-peer conversations mean they get real views of what the service is like to
• receive
• supported
• people seeing “someone like them” in paid employment as a skilled professional  raises expectations and
• morale
• organisations
• report users are much more engaged with setting corporate objectives – especially where they themselves train Quality Checkers, these people get a much wider experience which leads to a much greater
• contribution
• there’s
• learning for staff - users can have an
• opinion
• turning
• aspirational corporate objectives ("giving users a voice") into real tangible results

What does this mean for SROI?

 I’ve just returned from my SROI Practitioner training. What is this new tool? It depends on who you ask:

Who cares?

How is SROI different?

• Stakeholder engagement – all stakeholders who are materially affected need to be involved: that is, their input, their review of the report before it is final, their engagement with the analysis and assignment of values (not just a postcard informing them of a listening session)
• Materiality – recognise any other contributions from other projects, initiatives and services; recognise what is NOT a result of my service even though it is a change; avoid double-counting benefits
• Assigning monetary value – this provides a lowest common denominator which allows me to present an SROI ratio – how much you get back per £1 (or $1 or €1 invested). Obviously lots of assumptions have to be used, but these are transparent (and checked with stakeholders) and can be discussed

A standard, credible approach

Take Action

The Demos report "measuring social value: the gap between policy and practice" asks a very important question 'is there a standard method of measuring SROI?'.
The answer is: that depends.
There are many ways to measure social impact, and the social value generated; some are comprehensive, and at the same time resource intensive and complicated; whereas others are more toe in the water, relatively simplistic, but at the same time easy to implement.  Some focus entirely on qualitative approaches such as case studies and stories, whereas others make an attempt to quantify, and to give an indication of what the fund or commission is going to get for their money. Figure 1 is from the report:
 
Within the UK, the approach favoured by the SROI Network (and the New Economics Foundation, and the Scottish Government, and the Office of Civil Society) is the Social Return on Investment methodology (SROI) which, by its place in the bottom right-hand corner, this creates the most standardised and 'accurate' results, and requires the most resource to implement.
The Demos report points out that a few charity sector organisations have the resources, the culture or the skills to report on their activities to SROI standards. And yet, the SROI methodology is robust, accepted, and standardised across the UK.