how to use benefits management to encourage change and overcome obstacles

APM’s annual conference was a very well-attended and energetic event. The theme was Navigating Tomorrow: future skills for project managers, and what could be more useful for navigating the major projects of tomorrow than the magical ability to overcome obstacles?

This session was held on the second day of the conference, June 6th, 2024. Merv Wyeth and Hugo Minney showed how benefits management is such a powerful tool for engaging with stakeholders, particularly its effect with those who would usually resist change – the operations side of an organisation.

The conversation went both ways and we used Mentimeter for interactivity which gave us an excellent insight into our audience, who were also kind enough to share their insights and wisdom.

To view the interactive survey results and insights shared by participants, visit our Mentimeter Results.

See PDF of slide deck, slides 5, 6 and 7.

Strategic leadership and governance

3% of our audience were project sponsors, and a further 25% were in PMO. The largest proportion were project leadership (55%). Effective benefits management is not about tracking metrics but about aligning work done, and the investment of resources to do the work, to the objectives of the organisation.

The workshop provided leaders with frameworks and strategies to integrate benefits management into their governance processes, ensuring alignment with organisational goals and objectives. The presenters refer you to “A guide to using a benefits management framework”

Bridging the gap: planning and value creation

One of the key discussions centred around the disconnect between project planning and value creation. Whilst planning is often detailed and thorough, it frequently falls short in terms of translating into tangible benefits. To address this, the workshop introduced:

Using benefits as a way to quantify the achievement of an organisation’s strategic objectives through a portfolio approach
Initiation or change of the programmes, projects, tasks and other activities as a result of the observed variance between forecast and planned realisation of the organisation’s objectives
Benefits management at all stages of project and programme delivery including: inception, developing the business case, delivery and post-handover incorporation

This approach ensures that value creation is a core component of the project lifecycle, not an afterthought.

Practical scenarios and real-world applications

The interactive nature of the workshop allowed participants to share practical scenarios including real-world examples of what causes obstacles to project success. These case studies provided a rich source of learning, although they also illustrated quite a lot of commonality. The key themes emerging from 174 responses were:

Lack of clarity and alignment on benefits upfront;
Inadequate planning and adaptation through the project lifecycle; and
Weak engagement and change management;

See PDF of slide deck: slides 9-30.

Benefits management as an “overcoming obstacles” tool

We then talked about how benefits management could be one of the tools to resolve these obstacles.

Clarity comes from understanding the strategic objectives of the organisation, and how an individual piece of work (project/ programme/ task/ other activity) contributes to these objectives. Projects should not be started because they are a good idea – they should be started because they fulfil a need; and the extent to which they fulfil that need should be reviewed on a regular basis;
Part of the review on a regular basis is to compare how circumstances have changed, and how that impacts on the specific delivery of this project. Since the project is there to deliver benefits (contribution to objectives), a powerful tool for understanding which activities within a project need to be reviewed in more detail is use a Benefits Dependency Network (BDN). This ensures you focus your efforts on those activities which will make a difference, and don’t waste time and resources on those activities which aren’t relevant to this change in circumstances;
Stronger engagement: people come to work to do a good job. They often get fed up because they can’t see whether they’re doing a good job, or how good it is, and they can get disillusioned at work and appear to be unengaged. However, if they are involved in the change process through defining benefits, and the logic chains of a benefits dependency network, and even defining the measures that show whether a benefit is successful, then they will not only be engaged and supportive, but they will be the ones who ensure that change happens – behaviours and processes change to realise benefits to the optimum extent.

What did we learn?

Participants apply their learning from the session by posting answers to the question: How would you use benefits & value management to improve your chances of success? We had 79 answers, visible on slides 36 to 45 the presentation.

Several key themes emerge from the responses on how benefits and value management can be used to improve project success:

1. Stakeholder engagement and communication

Early and ongoing engagement with all stakeholders
Communicating benefits upwards to gain buy-in and downwards for understanding
Integrating benefits metrics into communications to increase engagement

2. Alignment and focus

Getting everyone on the same page from the start
Keeping the "North Star" of intended benefits present
Aligning project scope and decisions with the benefits

3. Decision making and prioritisation

Using benefits mapping to empower stakeholder-engaged decisions
Enabling data-led portfolio management and prioritisation
Assessing change requests against benefits

4. Tracking and monitoring

Defining clear, measurable benefit statements and success criteria
Regularly measuring and monitoring progress towards benefits
Updating benefit profiles to keep them current

Overall, the main themes focus on using benefits and value as the guiding light for engaging stakeholders, making decisions, maintaining focus and proactively tracking realisation throughout the project. Benefits management is seen as a powerful tool for alignment, communication, motivation and control.

in summary, benefits management is like a lighthouse: it isn’t your destination, but it helps you get to your destination, and it keeps you off the rocks.