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Is your project leaking benefits?
KPMG Global IT Project Management Survey
In October 2005, KPMG released its 2005 Global IT Project Management Survey. KPMG surveyed some 600 organisations across 22 countries and found that, in the past 12 months, a measly 2 percent consistently achieved targeted benefits, and that the majority have no way of accurately measuring the benefits achieved from projects.
KPMG’s Global Partner in Charge for Information Risk Management Egidio Zarrella concluded that “across the globe, project performance appears to be sub-standard. Organisations do not appear to be delivering on their commitments…and the required value from project investments is not being achieved”.
So what is going on? According to KPMG, most organisations don’t have a way of determining what value or return they are getting from projects. And many don’t even try to measure it. Only 41 percent had any form of benefits realization process to measure whether the project delivered what it said it would.
A big problem is what KPMG defines as benefits leakage. “Inadequate benefit management processes are preventing the articulation of success in the majority of cases,” cites the KPMG report, with up to one quarter of the promised business case benefits lost or forfeited across those surveyed.
iTools Business Development Manager Bryan Hemi believes that benefits leakage is an issue for New Zealand and Australian organisations. “We are really strong at the front end of building business cases and promising benefits, but that’s where it stops. The business case rarely sees the light of day once the project kicks off, and the focus quickly turns to time and cost. It needs to be more than that: the focus needs to be on delivering the promised benefits.
“Benefits management is what really counts for high-performing organisations,” says Bryan. “We are seeing some companies – who generally have established programme or project offices – starting to integrate benefits evaluation and measurement into their project portfolios and governance processes.”
KPMG advises that to control benefits leakage, you need to clearly define what “value you expect to achieve, how you will get it and when”. The consultancy recommends implementing “robust benefits capture and measurement processes together with clearly defined accountabilities”, and imposing “the requirement to develop a benefits management plan for projects.”
iTools application iTools Max tracks and measures benefits at a project and enterprise level. Increasingly iTools Max is being used by the likes of Progressive Enterprises and Fonterra to track and report on benefits to project sponsors, steering committees, senior management and boards. iTools Max is helping measure realized business benefits – which in turn, leads to more reliable forecasting and a stronger return on the organisations’ project investment.
If you want to find out more about how IT is evolving Projects Offices across the tertiary sector, download the white paper 'Projects Offices Move up the University Value Chain' at www.itoolscontrol.com
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