Benefits Realization
Benefits Realization
The Benefits Realization capability supports the monitoring of the achievement of an organization’s products, such as benefits, efficiencies, and revenue. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.
Definition and Business Outcomes
Definition
This supports the monitoring of the achievement (benefit/efficiencies/revenue) of an organization’s products.
Business Outcome
We can monitor and manage the revenue and benefits that the product is forecasted to deliver and make decisions on which products to continue to develop, enhance, or sunset.
Best Practices
Assign a benefits owner
Assign someone who will be accountable for realizing the program’s benefits once initial benefits projections have been evaluated. This role includes creating the business case and further refining the program’s projected benefits, collecting and reevaluating data at key project gates, and then reporting how benefits perform against the baseline during program delivery.
State the benefits clearly
State clearly in your business case what the expected benefits are, how they will be measured, and a timeframe for their realization. This will gain buy-in from key stakeholders and make reevaluation and reporting easier during execution and delivery, especially for intangible benefits like customer satisfaction and brand awareness.
Rank your benefits
Create a ranking order for your expected benefits. Having a ranking order determines which benefits you will track in the greatest depth and which metrics will most contribute to the overall health of your benefits realization.
Measure around the milestones
Determine a cadence for measuring and reporting benefits to track progress and detect potential issues. Since benefits can begin realization once projects with a program are delivered, using the expected delivery dates of key projects can provide a baseline schedule.
Commit to delivery
Effectively communicate the final goals and benefits of a program to your teams and teams of teams to ensure they commit to achieving the benefits. Understanding and committing to the benefits will aid in alignment between teams and managing unexpected changes.
Conduct a debrief
Hold a benefit debrief through surveys, in-person meetings, or a combination of both. Review the organization’s performance and evaluate how to implement new knowledge. These discussions should examine questions such as whether benefits projections were optimistic or pessimistic, if projections were accurate, if execution was mindful of the benefits, and more.
Processes and Reports
The benefits realization capability provides organizations the ability to monitor and manage a product’s expected benefits, revenue, and overall achievement, enabling better decision-making on which products to enhance, sunset, or continue to support. This capability supports the ongoing monitoring of product financials compared to the baseline, and the tracking of key results towards organizational objectives.
Benefits Realization Process Steps
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Benefits realization process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Roll up product financials | The purpose of this step is to summarize product costs and benefits to date by rolling up financial planning data from associated work and strategy entities. |
| Review product financials against the baseline | The purpose of this step is to monitor the realization of the product financials via a comparison against the baseline in order to track any variance. Users should harness this information to make well-informed decisions on the portfolio of products and/or to make any appropriate corrective actions. The product financial planning detail will have been updated with appropriate budget and target data during the product planning and funding process, and a financial baseline will have been taken. |
| Manage ongoing product financials |
As product financials are monitored and compared against the baseline, the product manager can manage both forecasted and actual information going forward. |
| Review relevant key results against objectives | Key Results allow you to capture and track progress toward your objectives. Product and portfolio managers should periodically review the current state of key results to see if progress is being made towards relevant objectives |
| Enhance/retire product | This step represents a decision point. Based on the product information captured to date and compared against baselines (financial data and additional key results), a decision should be made on whether the product should continue to be enhanced and funded or whether it should be retired. |
| Closure | If a decision is made to retire the product, update the product status to reflect this. |
Related Capabilities
Product Funding
This capability supports the creation, planning, and approval of an organization's products, and the ability to set time-phased budgets and financial targets for each product. Current and potential investments can be analyzed against budgets and financial targets.
Read moreProgram Management
This capability supports the monitoring and management of program roadmap realization by tracking the status and health of programs. Data rolled up from dependent projects is used to update the roadmap, manage program delivery, and communicate with stakeholders.
Read moreWork Management
This capability provides managers the ability to develop a work plan, view and manage all work details, define and classify risks, issues, and change requests, track and manage project delivery, and provide reports on the overall status and health of projects.
Read moreObjectives and Key Results
This capability provides organizations a framework to define, align around, execute, and measure progress toward key organizational goals by linking organizational and team goals to measurable outcomes in a hierarchical way.
Read more
Supported Solutions