Benefits Realisation Management for Projects and Programmes

Course overview

Course outline

1. 1Day One: Foundations of Benefits-Led Change

   • Why Projects Fail to Deliver Value: Common gaps between completed deliverables and realised business improvement
   • Key Terminology: Outputs, capabilities, outcomes, benefits and dis-benefits explained with practical examples
   • Benefits in the Investment Lifecycle: From strategic intent and business case through delivery to operations
   • Principles of Benefits Management: Alignment to strategy, clear ownership, measurable change and continuous review
   • Roles and Accountabilities: Sponsors, benefit owners, business change managers and the PMO
   • Assessing Benefits Maturity: Reviewing how participants' organisations manage value today
   • Workshop: Analysing a case where a technically successful project delivered little value
2. 2Day Two: Identifying, Mapping and Profiling Benefits

   • Benefit Discovery Techniques: Workshops, interviews and process analysis to uncover realistic benefits
   • Benefits Mapping: Linking enablers and business changes to outcomes and strategic objectives
   • Dependency Networks: Showing which changes in ways of working each benefit relies on
   • Classifying Benefits: Financial, efficiency, quality, risk reduction, compliance and stakeholder benefits
   • Dis-benefits: Identifying, recording and managing the negative consequences of change
   • Writing Benefit Profiles: Description, owner, baseline, target, measure, timing and dependencies
   • Workshop: Building a benefits map and three benefit profiles for a sample programme
3. 3Day Three: Measuring and Valuing Benefits

   • Selecting Good Measures: Leading and lagging indicators, data sources and measurement frequency
   • Establishing Baselines: Capturing current performance before change begins
   • Financial Valuation: Cash-releasing and non-cash-releasing benefits, net present value and payback
   • Valuing Non-Financial Benefits: Proxy measures, scoring models and stakeholder valuation
   • Avoiding Distortions: Optimism bias, double counting, attribution problems and benefit inflation
   • Benefits in the Business Case: Presenting value credibly to approval boards
   • Practical Exercise: Setting measures, baselines and targets for the workshop programme
4. 4Day Four: Planning, Governance and Tracking

   • The Benefits Realisation Plan: Timing, milestones, owners and integration with the delivery schedule
   • Benefits Governance: Approval gates, review boards and escalation routes
   • Tracking and Reporting: Benefits registers, dashboards and realisation forecasts
   • Managing Change Adoption: Stakeholder engagement, training and behaviour change that unlock benefits
   • Handling Variance: Responding when benefits fall behind forecast or erode over time
   • Portfolio View: Using benefits data to prioritise, re-scope or stop investments
   • Workshop: Designing a benefits dashboard and governance calendar
5. 5Day Five: Realisation, Review and Embedding the Discipline

   • Transition to Business as Usual: Handing over benefit ownership and measurement after project closure
   • Post-Implementation Reviews: Planning, conducting and reporting objective benefits reviews
   • Lessons Learned: Feeding realised results back into estimating and future business cases
   • Building Organisational Capability: Policies, templates, training and culture for benefits management
   • Common Pitfalls and Success Factors: Insights from public and private sector programmes
   • Personal Action Planning: Applying benefits management to participants' current projects
   • Final Case Study: Presenting a complete benefits management approach for review and feedback