Benefits Management Pictorial Overview

Benefits Management is a continuous and dynamic process that requires active management and sponsorship from the sponsors to deliver the business benefits/value. The VAL IT diagram explains the benefits paradigm within the IT governance process per the diagram below. Most organizations have controls/methodology's in place for Strategy/Planning, Architecture and delivery, but little in the way of benefits management to answer the "Value Question". The key criteria described under the value question are what feed into the benefits register and process - see post on this here. I have and am using the process depicted below as a starting point for a number of my clients. It is a great picture to include in benefit management related presentations to senior management.


Source : Val IT

Purpose of this blog

Hi - this is my first post on this blog. I have been in the technology industry for over 10 years as a consultant, business analyst and projects manager. I moved into the IT Strategy and Governance (ITSG) space after about 5 years ago, where I was more in the delivery space. The ITSG area exposed me to the business case development process and the topic of benefits management. Most organizations struggle to define good benefits and that is why business case value propositions are some times very subjective. If you can't define and then quantify benefits, all the financial calculations (like NPV, IRR) will be pretty meaningless. Also, poor benefits definition will make the whole benefits management process redundant and hence no way of objectively saying that beenfits were realized.

This is a blog for professionals to share their views, questions and ideas around the Benefits Management process, in terms of defining benefits during the investment or business case process, managing and measuring benefits to eventually realizing the benefits when the solution is delivered. We will touch on various related topics and good resources. My focus, per my background, will be on benefits from technology or process solutions, however there is no reason other types of projects cannot use the same rationale.

If you know of any good links, resources or information you would like to share please share it with me and I will put it on this site.