APMG(1) has recently published a document on benefits management in the project environment. Many project management standards identify that benefits resulting from a project should be identified at the start of a project in measurable criteria usually in a business case. The business case is often written by the project manager. But the benefits resulting from projects can only be measured after a project is finished, sometimes long after a project is finished. Often the project manager is no longer around to take responsibility for the achievement or non-achievement of those benefits.
This results in an interesting scenario. A project manager is interested in a project, wants to see it implemented as managing it provides income and may add to the project manager’s resume and qualifications, but shortly after its closing, the project manager moves on to another project. This project manager is charged with writing the business case, and obviously will write it in such a way that the benefits are positive and the project is approved. But this same project manager is not really responsible for the business case, as it is unlikely they will be around long enough to answer for achievement of those benefits.
International development projects struggle with this contradiction. Aid is granted to projects though an agency. We, the taxpayer, would like to ensure that our money is well-spent. So the organizations responsible for assigning that aid money, such as CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency), develop mechanisms to ensure that the granted funds achieve results. They call it “Results-Based Management” (RBM). But I question the effectiveness of the “RBM” approach.
CIDA says on their website that the RBM is “a way of working that looks beyond activities and outputs to focus on actual results; the outcomes of projects and programs.” CIDA has developed a comprehensive toolkit for measuring those outcomes and risks to the outcomes. Unfortunately, most of those outcomes cannot be measured until a project is near its end or completed and a project manager has moved on to another project, or at least not until a good portion of money has been spent. Okay – perhaps success is measured earlier, but I suspect that those measures are skewed to favour approval to keep going, for the same reasons a business case is often skewed to approve a project. One of the issues with the CIDA process is that it seems that it was written without any project management expertise. There is no mention of measuring project performance using well-accepted project management tools, such as earned value, schedule baselines, work breakdown structure, etc.
But benefits, outcomes, results do need to measured and someone needs to be accountable for their achievement. This is one element of a strong governance framework. The project “owner”, the person or organization requesting, championing and/or funding the project can be the only logical answer. This person or group are responsible for identification of benefits and project selection, as they are typically attached to the outcomes over the long-term. Whoever this is needs to be identified in the governance framework, named in the project, and continuously involved in the project, providing oversight and direction. This is the missing link in many project management methodologies and would close one of the gaps in the Results-Based Management framework.
(1) APMG International is the accrediting body for the UK Government’s Office of Government Commerce Best Practice guidance portfolio.