From Strategies to benefit realization. Closing the gap

In my post yesterday, I highlighted why the BRM concept is useful for any management that is serious in steering the organization towards realizing strategies. Today, I will discuss how this gap can be bridged through BRM. Having known the importance of BRM, management outght to come up with a good approach on how to implement it in their organizations. To do this, we will look at the following factors:

Portfolio management based on strategic outcomes: As explained in my post yesterday, most organizations still assess the value of their projects based on yesteryear parameters such as time, scope, and budget. Naively, they use these metrics and consider that projects that are completed punctually and within the provided budget to be great success, even though they may have no connection to the strategy of the organization. To turn around this, the organization needs to start thinking along the lines of project management and how they can measure success differently. This is a daunting task, even for BRM-mature organizations. A case in study is an organization that goes ahead to develop an app for its customers to help them boost sales and lure their customers towards more purchases. It could be the case that the IT department develops and delivers the software as agreed on schedule and within the budget. This will be touted by the organization as a great success. However, if the customers aren’t using it, then it won’t in any way have an impact on the cash flow or improve the company’s financial status. There needs to be a clear roadmap that neworks strategy and project portfolios for projects that are being undertaken. This needs organizations to develop a culture of genuinely defining, managing and tracking progress against KPIs that are explicitly tied to strategic outcomes. The mangement needs the nerve to kill projects which wont yield any strategic improvements.

Communication arena between executive and leadership team: There should be an active engagement and shared responsibility among theexecutive management who set and approve strategy, business owners who translate the strategy into projects with targeted outcomes for their area of the business, and project managers who manage the execution of projects to realize those outcomes. Getting these three stakeholder groups to be engaged is a key priority for ensuring benefits realization. In many organizations, ensuring shared responsibility across these groups to meet strategic business outcomes is a clear opportunity, that should not go unrealized. Continous dialog between these stakeholder groups is vital during project execution. Transparency on how well projects are helping to achieve strategic outcomes does help to create space for dialog and gives the executive the need in-depth information and insight they need to have broader strategic discussions early on and on a continuous basis. This creates room for making course corrections where it may be necessary.

Creating an environment for success and having the right team: To grow to a level of BRM maturity, there is need for organizations to invest in the right environment. They need to understand the needed behavior and where they may be forced to change company culture. These may include the needed to have frequent assessment and realignment of projects to meet strategic outcomes, high level of accountability for project progress, quick decision-making characterized by solid problem solving and ability to prioritize solutions, and give early warnings on issues that could be risks. The management should embrace constructive dialog with the project managers to forge a united working team and improve BRM growth. Additionally, project managers should be supported to acquire the right skill set and be acquainted with their working domain.

With the right insight, the management should provide a big-picture perspective and guide the organization to pivot both individual projects and the overall portfolio to be able to better capture the projected value. BRM helps create this visibility and insight, serving as a compass that points to “true north” regarding the company’s strategy, highlighting deviations between project objectives and outcomes and that strategy, and giving leaders the opportunity to course-correct at a point where small changes can still make a big difference. That ensures that the management can take decisive action to support those projects that most directly link to strategy, hence closing the gap.

Aligning business processes to achieve strategic goals (Part 1)

This is the first in the 4 part blog about BRM and benefit value in an organization. Benefits management is crucial to any organization if the strategic goals are to be met. Every organization goes in to business with one goal, to gain some benefits from the investments made; in the context of portfolios, programs and projects. There are better chances of achieving this, if there is proper and established approach to Business Realization Management (BRM), a great driver to project success. One of the reasons why most projects fail, is because they fail to consider the benefits that the business inspire to achieve but rather get so much engrossed with the delivery of products and management of deliverables.

Why BRM?

To forge a greater working capacity between IT and the business environment, BRM is needed to be the mediator that harmozies IT operations with the business strategies of the company. IT contributes to a company’s services by demonstrating it’s value and relevance to the business by helping an organization to prioritize projects and ensure that portfolios, programs and projects are well aligned, with the technology that maximizes ROI (Return on investment). Shortly put, it helps to bridge the gap from the actual planning of a deliverable to realization of maximum measurable benefits. Programs and project managers are usually tasked with securing value creation in the organization is achieved, through creation of a dialogure-friendly environment where different departments work towards the right conditions for success. To have realistic chances of aligning business operations with the strategic goals of an organization, the project manager should be responsible for strategic alignment of projects within a program while the portfolio manager is responsible for strategic alignment of programs. In simple sterms, BRM is the chain connecting a business strategic goals and the benefits realized.

How company culture influnces BRM

Company management plays a significant role in building a culture and practice within the company’s structure, that is tailored to meet this approach. When there is a positive company culture which nurtures accountability and collaboration, it quickly becomes possible for the company to move forward and work towards their strategic goals and a guided path in decision-making. The involvement of management and executive leadership in aligning the key three levels of a product development cycle (portfolio, program and project managers), are the steering factors in adapting the best practices of BRM to fit a company’s culture and improve benefit realization and sustainment. The three key steps which are used in implementing BRM are:

1. Identifying benefits – In the initial phase of the project, it is important that the benefits to be attained are well addressed within the business case. It is a key decision-making moment, where management should ensure that the projects’ benefits are aligned with the strategic goals and objectives of the company.
2. Benefits execution – This is guided by a benefits execution plan in which key performance indicators are continously used to monitor progress as well as discovering new benefit opportunities.
3. Sustaining the attained benefits – This occurs post delivery of the deliverables where an evaluation is performed to review the execution phase and the goodies and failures along the way.

To further understand why most businesses struggle with BRM realization in an organizational context, continue to the second series.