Benefits Integration Techniques for Tracking, Execution and Realization
Applying Earned Benefit Management
SERIES ARTICLE
By Crispin (“Kik”) Piney, PgMP, PfMP
Southern France
This article brings together the key points and insights from my Earned Benefit Management articles in this series published in the PM World Journal over the past 12 months.
Introduction: Background to the Series
Towards the end of 2017, I sent an advance copy of my book “Earned Benefit Program Management” to David Pells. He kindly suggested the I might like to submit a series of articles on the subject to the PM World Journal. This project has provided me with a creative and enjoyable use of my spare time over the last year.
This concluding article in the series aims to provide an overview and a glossary to the concepts that were explained in more detail in these articles.
Common Threads
The common goal linking all of these articles is to develop a framework that ensures project value delivery and business success in a predictable and repeatable manner.
Project success depends on achieving the benefits to which the project is expected to contribute. Realization of benefits is normally achieved through the coordination of multiple, interdependent projects managed as a program. The Earned Benefit Framework is a set of concepts, tools and techniques that support planning, validation, tracking, and control of all of the steps towards realizing the specified benefits. The Benefits Realization Map (BRM) provides the technical foundation on which the Earned Benefit Framework is built.
All of the articles in this series [Piney 2018*, Piney 2019*] explain how to develop and apply the Earned Benefit techniques, with examples from a representative case study. The list of principal acronyms is provided at the end of the current article, along with a brief explanation and a pointer to the article in which the term was first defined.
Each of the articles describes elements of the Earned Benefit Framework that, taken together, provide a complete toolbox that can be applied across the full Benefits Realization Life Cycle.
The Benefits Realization Life Cycle
This life cycle, shown in Figure 1, was presented in Piney 2018f [“Realizing the Benefits”] and serves to provide an overall view of the stages of effective benefits realization. It comprises five phases.
- Conception – during which the BRM is developed and the business plan is validated and approved.
- Implementation – during which the technical work is planned and carried out.
- Emergence – during which the effects of the work begin to deliver benefits. In many cases, this phase will start while implementation is still under way.
- Accrual – the full set of planned benefits has been developed and has reached its complete delivery potential.
- Profitability – this phase starts from the financial break-even point, i.e., once the accrued benefits equal the total program investment.
Figure 1: The Benefits Realization Life Cycle
An overview of the concepts, the case study, and the nine articles is given next.
More…
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Editor’s note: This series is by Crispin “Kik” Piney, author of the book Earned Benefit Program Management, Aligning, Realizing and Sustaining Strategy, published by CRC Press in 2018. Merging treatment of program management, benefits realization management and earned value management, Kik’s book breaks important new ground in the program/project management field. In this series of articles, Kik introduces some earned benefit management concepts in simple and practical terms.
How to cite this article: Piney, C. (2019). Benefits Realization Compendium: Benefits Integration Techniques for Tracking, Execution and Realization; Series on Applying Earned Benefit Management. PM World Journal, Vol. VIII, Issue IV (May). Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pmwj81-May2019-Piney-Benefits-series-part-9-Benefits-Compendium.pdf
About the Author
Crispin Piney
Southern France
After many years managing international IT projects within large corporations, Crispin (“Kik”) Piney, B.Sc., PgMP is now a freelance project management consultant based in the South of France. At present, his main areas of focus are risk management, integrated Portfolio, Program and Project management, scope management and organizational maturity, as well as time and cost control. He has developed advanced training courses on these topics, which he delivers in English and in French to international audiences from various industries. In the consultancy area, he has developed and delivered a practical project management maturity analysis and action-planning consultancy package.
Kik has carried out work for PMI on the first Edition of the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3™) as well as participating actively in fourth edition of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge and was also vice-chairman of the Translation Verification Committee for the Third Edition. He was a significant contributor to the second edition of both PMI’s Standard for Program Management as well as the Standard for Portfolio Management. In 2008, he was the first person in France to receive PMI’s PgMP® credential; he was also the first recipient in France of the PfMP® credential. He is co-author of PMI’s Practice Standard for Risk Management. He collaborates with David Hillson (the “Risk Doctor”) by translating his monthly risk briefings into French. He has presented at a number of recent PMI conferences and published formal papers.
Kik Piney is the author of the book Earned Benefit Program Management, Aligning, Realizing and Sustaining Strategy, published by CRC Press in 2018
Kik Piney can be contacted at kik@project-benefits.com.
To view other works by Kik Piney, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at http://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/crispin-kik-piney/
