A strategic perspective on why benefits management is difficult

Andy Murray joined delegates of the Derby Chapter recently to give a thought provoking overview of seven reasons why organisations and practitioners struggle with benefits management.

Andy started this session by providing data from P3M3 assessments that shows benefits management is consistently the weakest aspect of project management across nearly all sectors. His general overview of the seven reasons why benefits management is difficult was followed by a debate on what can be done to improve benefits management.

Seven reasons why benefits management is difficult are:

Reason one sloppy use of the term benefit

Reason two Benefits are subjective

Reason three Poor or zero baseline measures

Reason four Attribution of what could provide the benefit and what actually provided the benefit

Reason five Measuring what is easy to prove outputs

Reason six Benefits take time to accrue

Reason seven Measuring benefits holds people to account

Delegates felt that Andy had a good level of engagement with the audience by running a small group discussion and feedback session after the main presentation which significantly improved the understanding retention of the presentation content. Furthermore Andys get on with it approach was appreciated by the majority of the delegates.

A copy of Andys presentation can be found by clicking on the link below.