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The area of benefits realisation is frequently glossed over in favour of other areas of project management. During project initiation, the structure is put in place, the budget is approved and often vague benefits are documented in the business case. Once the money is spent there are little effective mechanisms in place to track how the project has impacted the organisation and so it is difficult to show how the business will release the value of its investment over time.
Managing benefits from OGC
The Office of Government and Commerce (OGC) has written an excellent document on this subject last year, outlining the background of benefit management and providing an example framework:
- role in the business case,
- benefits realisation strategy & plan,
- benefits management action plan,
- programme roles & responsibilities.
This also includes examples from Inland Revenue & CJIT (with Capgemini) and a sample Benefits Profile template: See www.ogc.gov.uk/documents/ManagingBenefitsV101.pdf
Change Program Benefits Management from DVLA
This is also an excellent example on the website from DVLA:
www.ogc.gov.uk/documents/CP0019_DVLA_Change_Program-Benefits_Management.pdf
The OGC has incorporated the benefits framework into their Prince 2 2009 and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) products. There is a lot more emphasis on benefits in the new Prince 2 2009 course; in particular around how these need to be tracked and realised post project and how this works in a programme environment.
For current literature on the subject, Steven Jenner has produced some fine work in his book “Realising benefits from ICT – a fools errand” and he is the former Director of Criminal Justice IT programme in the UK. Link:
http://academic-publishing.org/Stephen_Jenner.htm
Benefits management is particularly important in difficult times where project funding is limited and prioritization by business benefits will need to take precedence.
Amands Symonds
Amanda has previously worked as a benefits management course facilitator for Sigma UK, in Surrey. She holds ITIL, Prince 2 and MSP certifications and is currently working as a consulting project manager for MetaPM in Melbourne, Australia (www.metapm.com.au).
Quality Management
Quality management in a programme ensures that stakeholders are satisfied that their planned benefits have the best chance of being realised and will meet their expectations. If a programme does not apply quality effectively to its activities, its assets and outputs are less likely to be fit for purpose, with the consequential detrimental impact on the outcomes and desired benefits.
Quality management must be an activity that runs continuously throughout the life of a programme and beyond, the focus being on helping the programme with the achievement of the strategic goals.
Business Case
The programme’s Business Case provides the vital test of the viability of the programme. It should be used to answer the question “Is the investment in the programme still worth it?”
Since this viability question is ongoing, the Business Case is actively maintained throughout the programme and continually updated with new information.
The Business Case is an aggregation of specific information about the value of the benefits, the risks to achieving them, the costs of delivering the Blueprint and the timescales for achievement.
Risk Management and Issue Resolution
A risk is an uncertain event or set of events which, should it occur, will have an effect on the achievement of objectives. These effects need not all be detrimental as a risk can be either a threat or an opportunity.
The task of risk management is to ensure that the programme make a cost-effective use of a Risk Management Process that includes a series of well-defined steps. The aim is to support better decision-making through a good understanding of risks and their likely impact.
Issues, on the other hand, are events that have happened, were not planned, are currently affecting the programme in some way and need to be actively dealt with and resolved. Risks, should they occur, become issues.
The task of issue resolution is to prevent an issue from threatening the programme’s chances of achieving a successful outcome.
Planning and Control
Planning and control are key to the success of any transformation programme, but should be seen as distinctly separate concepts and activities. The preparation of a Programme Plan involves processing large amounts of information and extensive consultation to build the plan.
Programme control provides supporting activities and processes that run throughout the programme to refine and improve delivery, minimise the impact of ambiguity and bring certainty wherever possible.
The Programme Plan should include information on the Project Dossier (timescales, costs, outputs and dependencies), risks and assumptions, a schedule showing the tranches, the transition plan and the monitoring and control activities and performance targets. The Monitoring and Control Strategy will set out the approach for applying the programme’s internal controls based on the Programme Plan.
The governance theme Vision
A vision is a picture of a better future. It is the basis for the outcomes and delivered benefits of the programme, and as such it is a vital focus and enabler for the buy-in, motivation and activity-alignment of the large community of people involved in the programme.
The Vision Statement is used to communicate the end goal of the programme being an outward-facing description of the future state following programme delivery.
A good Vision Statement should be written in the future state, be easy to understand and to communicate, apply to a broad range of stakeholders, describe a desirable and compelling future that matches the degree of transformational change, be verifiable and should be short and memorable.
The governance theme Organisation
Establishing a clear and effective organisation is critical to programme success. Ensuring that the Programme Organisation meets the needs of the programme is both an initial and ongoing task.
Effective Programme Organisation requires a combination of defines roles, clear responsibilities and management structures together with reporting arrangements that are needed to deliver the programme’s desired outcomes.
Programme management is most effective when issues are debated freely and risks are evaluated openly. This requires a leadership style and culture that encourages the flow of information between the projects and the programme. Every opportunity to advance the programme towards its goals should be welcomed and converted into constructive progress.
The Governance Themes
Governance is the control framework through which programmes deliver their change objectives and remain within corporate visibility and control. The programme’s control framework needs to be integrated with the corporate governance framework of the organisation, using the organisation’s existing governance and control frameworks wherever they exist.
MSP describes nine Governance Themes, each of which details the consistent controls needed to manage the programme.
Check these free MSP exam samples – So you’ve prepared yourself for your MSP exam. All you need to do now is find some MSP questions to practise the exam. Ofcourse you can go to a MSP ATO, pay a couple of hundred euro’s for exam training. But another option is to test yourself with the following free samples of the MSP exam:
MSP Foundation exam:
- The MSP foundation on the Lagant website if your ATO has a contract with Lagant; ( I used this site to prepare myself, works great!)
- Pm4Succes MSP sample foundation exam and the sample exam answers.
- AfaProject MSP™ Style Exam Questions and MSP™ Style Exam Answers
MSP Practitioner exam:
- Pm4Succes MSP sample practitioner exam: Scenario, Question Booklet, Answer Booklet and Sample Marking Scheme.
MSP advanced practitioner exam:
- Pm4Succes MSP sample advanced practitioner exam: Case Study, Sample Paper, Sample Marking Scheme.