Benefits Realisation

What do you think of when you think of formal Project Management?  Do you immediately picture Gantt charts, PIDs and other pointless documentation, administration coming out of your ears?  Or do you picture a shining machine, running like clockwork, happy people all clear about what they are to do next?

This government is promoting Infrastructure projects as the way out of the recession - they create jobs, create GDP, and leave a lasting legacy.  But is it all rosy in the garden?  Let's look at the evidence.

SROI is the most reliable tool for either developing a business case for funding for an initiative, or for evaluating the success of existing innovations, projects and services.

SROI is a special form of Benefits Management.  It stands on the shoulders of evaluation frameworks that have gone before, so it recognises Cost/ Benefit analysis, and extends this to cover the cost/benefit of outcomes that may not have a direct financial benefit - it assigns a financial equivalent.

I've compared all of the different evaluation methods in the pages that follow - but read about SROI here!

The problem with the IS/IT investment is that people often don’t think about the benefits - "of course we need it". Ward and Daniel illustrate this from a survey reported in 2003 (Lambert and Edwards – also at Cranfield University) as follows:

·        55% of respondents think that an appraisal of the IS investment is important

·        Only 22% have a process to perform this appraisal

·        Only 10% consider the implications of business change from their IS investment

In order to make sense of your data you are going to need some basic statistics. We explore both what statistics mean, and how you can use them, here. We also include a Microsoft Excel template for getting some simple statistics which will help