Benefits Realisation

PRINCE2 is Child's Play

PlaystationWhat 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?

Infrastructure Projects - Who Benefits?

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.

What is Social Return on Investment (SROI)?

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!

BOOK: Ward & Daniel "Benefits Management: Delivering Value from IS & IT Investments"

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

Benefits Realisation method for Infrastructure - Univ of Salford

HaCIRIC logo - Univ of SalfordDuring 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.

Realising Benefits from Projects and Programmes (or not)

Steve Jenner
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

More for your money? Private healthcare vs Publicly funded

Life expectancy vs %GDP health spend
Which is better - private funding or public? Which gives a better outcome for the individual (* clinical outcome, * user experience, * cost-effective, * sustainable) and is there a clear picture?
One way to examine this question is to look at different countries in the world and see what works for them.  I tackle this in the latest blog on Technorati.

Earned Value Management and RoI - what it means to you

 

Equation for whole project Earned Value
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.

The resources to improve health

In the run-up to the general election, all the political parties trying to win your vote using the NHS card. They make all these wild promises, but what is going on behind the scenes? Labour -- Gordon Brown's health team is promising something for everyone:  the public can have whatever they want

Measuring things - using statistics and analysing data

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

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Recent Additions and Updates

If I were running the country - encouraging business

Minimum wage

Fantasy government - what would I do if I were in government?  Well how about reduce corporation tax, increase income tax, increase minimum wage and invest in job creation in the regions?  That would be a good start - create jobs where there are workers, then make sure that the right amount of tax is collected and at the same time reduce spend on benefits which are only used to increase profits of selfish organisations.

Would it work?  Have your say.

PwC Report on the Current State of Project Management

PwC Project Management ReportPwC found that successful companies are getting more mature in their project management ability.  This raises the game – successful companies have lower costs from fewer failed projects, and less successful companies have to work harder to catch up.  There are some important lessons to take this report for everyone – Read more…

Joy instead of tedium

The Office

Every office has them - the tasks that have to be done that nobody likes doing.  Whether it's the audit, the wages, standard letters, whatever it is - someone has to do it and it feels like a waste of time and money.

Why should you care?

So you employ somebody, so why do you care about how tedious the task is? Well they are costing money, to do something that could be done far more effectively.

Learning from the Past

Evidence for service improvement

Many public service changes have little basis in evidence. Their success (or otherwise) does not appear to depend on how 'good' the policy itself is, but rather on how it has been implemented. This relies on staff attitudes and relationships. My research falls into a number of broad categories: finding out what is currently happening; what people think about it; and what people think it will mean.

Taxonomy upgrade extras:

Consumer Price Index (CPI) Calculator for SROI

CPI components

When calculating a Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluation or SROI forecast , sometimes you have to rely on published figures from reports.  But if these are from a few years ago, then they probably need adjusting for inflation.

There are calculators on the web to do this for you, but I found them cumbersome and it was difficult to keep a record of what calculator I'd used, and how, for which value - auditability and transparency is vital for SROI.  So here's a spreadsheet to do this properly!

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