Benefits management

Benefits are positive, measurable improvements which contribute to organisational objectives. You should engage stakeholders and senior managers early to scope and define the benefits of your project.

You can use a 5-step mapping approach to do this. Consider: 

• drivers - what is not working or needs to change?
• objectives - what do you want the future to look like?
• benefits - why will this project make things better/add value?
• changes - what changes are needed to achieve this?
• enablers - what will underpin the changes?

This will help clarify your strategy (why you are doing something) and your delivery (what you are doing and how).

Create a benefits management plan

A benefits management plan is a key project artefact that provides a structured approach for the identification, appraisal, planning, tracking and realisation of benefits.

It's mandated by the Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM) for core Scottish Government (SG), Executive Agencies, non-ministerial departments and SG sponsored bodies carrying out major investment projects.

Other organisations within the Technology Assurance Framework are highly recommended to have a benefits management plan in place.

The Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) is ultimately accountable for the benefits management plan. This includes ensuring that: 

• benefits are identified
• plans for the realisation of benefits are put in place
• benefits are evaluated and measured to demonstrate whether the intended return on investment is being achieved
• lessons learned from the project's delivery are captured

Appoint a benefit owner

A benefit owner is a senior manager who is responsible for ensuring a specific benefit is achieved. They also act as an escalation point for the project manager for issues related to that benefit. The role should extend to business as usual and contribute to the post-project evaluation.

Monitor progress

Benefits management is an iterative process which runs across the full business change lifecycle, from the identification of desired benefits through to their realisation and learning from experience.

Progress should be monitored against benefits and baselined before change started. Identify where benefits are not being realised and take remedial action. Update your benefits strategy and the outline benefit realisation plan included in the business case.

Measure success

You should try to re-use existing measures (e.g. Key Performance Indicators from the National Outcomes Framework, targets from Directorate plans, or success criteria from the business case).

This will ensure the measures are recognised as valid evidence of performance, there’s a baseline, and the data is readily available and routinely collected.

You may need to have more than one measure for a particular benefit. Be careful not to double count. If you find that one measure is indicative of more than one benefit, you may want to consider grouping them and reporting on them under one strategic objective or end benefit.

Sometimes it can be hard to measure the benefit itself. In this case, you might have to devise measures around changes effected (that should result in a benefit) or a project deliverable (that should enable the change that should result in a benefit).

The more cause-effect assumptions you make, the more tenuous the link to the benefit becomes. Try to develop measures as closely to the benefits as you can and make sure the project board and SRO agree the cause-effect assumptions and validity of the measures.

Ownership and responsibility

Different organisations may have different job titles, and responsibilities may be aggregated or shared by more than one person. What is crucial is that:

• someone has overall accountability for benefits realisation (usually the SRO)
• someone is responsible for the required business change(s) (usually the project/programme manager)
• benefits owners are identified for each benefit
• responsibility extends beyond the life of the initiative to ensure change is embedded and benefits are realised
• an appropriate mid to long-term approach to monitoring and evaluation is agreed and resourced, to inform similar future development

Further information

Colleagues on the SCOTS network can access the Benefits Toolkit on eRDM.