Your Project is Generating Lots of Benefits? Manage Them As Well!
- Benefits Realization Management
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Today I would like to focus in short on the whole idea of managing benefits in the context of project management. So what exactly is a benefit? To answer that, I’ll quote the following sentence:
“A benefit is defined as a gain realized by the organization and beneficiaries through portfolio, program, or project outputs and resulting outcomes.” – Benefits Realization Management
I’ll give a very simple example:
Let’s just say you are working as an architect for a large project that involves making an actual building in down town New York. You are mid-way in the project. Things are looking good, all plans are on schedule and things are looking great. Project revenue is coming in. Parts of the building are already showing signs of completion. As a result, you get contacts from local business people asking whether you would consider opportunities to do business with them in the near future. You also receive some additional funding from the local municipality to execute additional projects. Lastly, the company you work for get a lot of positive attention and additional requests for other projects.
Who would have thought that the things that you get as a result of managing a project, would need to be managed as well? All of these benefits that originated during the execution of a project need to be managed. Because in large projects, all these things can turn into a long list of things that, as a project manager or company, you would certainly want to keep track of as your project progresses!
There is a whole framework dedicated to management benefits and it’s called the Benefit Realization Management Framework (or BRM Framework for short) involving several stages. From identifying the benefits all the way to measuring the benefits by multiple roles while developing the continuity of these benefits.
As someone who writes code for a living I feel like I’m exploring totally new frontiers with the more managerial side of things, which I find to be quite fascinating.
The journey continues!