Day #10: Why is Benefit Management so hard to do?

One of the most difficult things of this recently discovered (for me!) world of PM, is the fact that everything is a bit abstract. Maybe it is because my background is engineering, and I need not only information but also real-life examples and application procedures. 

But it seems that I'm not the only one who is afraid of abstraction and who finds difficult to include all the theoretical concepts in the routine. The article Why is Benefit Management so hard to do? goes directly into the core of the problem and it is an interesting reading. It follows yesterday's approach, when I wrote about research regarding how project managers were not as involved as they could in BRM.

So now we have a poll directed to PM with the opening question of this post and here are the answers:

From the original article Why is Benefits Management so hard to do? , projecttimes.com

Fernando Santiago, with over 25 years of PM experience, comments on those answers and uses other PM's testimonies, making the article packed with interesting insights.

But I found interesting that the first and third most popular options, which together represent more than 50%, are about what we discussed yesterday: there is a lack of governance and accountability. Project managers are aware of the importance of benefits management, yet they aren't good at it because they think that it is not in their role. They only think about outcomes, not necessarily about benefits.

This is more technically referred as being focused on the "triple constraint" of PM (more to come in future posts). The term and the idea appeared in yesterday's publication as well, but here it is very well summarized in words of Calum Robertson, Principal Portfolio Analyst at Auckland Council: "Change in culture from thinking about projectts to thinking about investments. Projects are expected to be completed 'on time, on budget', but investments are expected to yield a return". 

I guess the key concept of the week is that BRM is important, their enablers such as adequate governance or tracking are crucial (remember the Bridge to Nowhere!) and PM should be fully involved, even when it implies a small twist in their mindset.