Tracking benefits
November 19, 2014 11:49 PM Subscribe
How do you track the benefits of multiple projects delivering over time?
In discussions at work today one of my co-workers was adamant that there was no Project Management, Enterprise Architecture / Model Based Systems Engineering software that could be used to track benefits from multiple projects or programs in a portfolio. This does not equate with what I have been told about some EA / MBSE programs (like Enterprise Architect, CORE, or even the requirements management tool DOORS). That said, I am not 100% certain that these tools (or tools like them) can do this job. Are there any PM tools that have been developed or used to do benefits realisation tracking? I know that EA and MBSE tools suck at modeling temporal aspects of change, but can they be used to do this? Do you have any experience in doing this across multiple projects delivering at different times?
I am very familiar with PRINCE2 and IEEE/ISO 14288 and 12280 if that helps with your answers.
In discussions at work today one of my co-workers was adamant that there was no Project Management, Enterprise Architecture / Model Based Systems Engineering software that could be used to track benefits from multiple projects or programs in a portfolio. This does not equate with what I have been told about some EA / MBSE programs (like Enterprise Architect, CORE, or even the requirements management tool DOORS). That said, I am not 100% certain that these tools (or tools like them) can do this job. Are there any PM tools that have been developed or used to do benefits realisation tracking? I know that EA and MBSE tools suck at modeling temporal aspects of change, but can they be used to do this? Do you have any experience in doing this across multiple projects delivering at different times?
I am very familiar with PRINCE2 and IEEE/ISO 14288 and 12280 if that helps with your answers.
I think you might be looking for something like Troux?
posted by cross_impact at 7:31 AM on November 20, 2014
posted by cross_impact at 7:31 AM on November 20, 2014
Response by poster: Elmay - "benefits" are the current buzzword used to describe the positive changes to a business that result from the implementation / realisation of a project (PRINCE2 has the wonderful term "dis-benifit" to describe the negative). A benefit is usually measured against a baseline but is rarely something that can be tracked in Excel. For example, one project may have been expected to increase customer satisfaction (measured a "x" stores over 6 weeks using random people filling in a Likert scaled questionnaire) while another project promised to automate sales to provide a "y"% decrease in transaction times. Both benefits of both projects can be measured individually but is there a way of measuring the benefits delivery of both projects?
posted by dangerousdan at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2014
posted by dangerousdan at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2014
Can you convert all benefits to some estimated increase in revenue or decrease in cost for a given period, even if the conversion carries some assumptions? That would seem to be the only way to quantify all the projects against the same scale.
Example - for every 1% increase in customer satisfaction, customer retention could be assumed to increase by .x%, and if the customer base is increased by that amount, that can be multipled by the average spend per customer...
I realize there are inevitably some assumptions baked into doing something like that (unless you can research each of those factors), but it would at least give a rough yardstick if you're trying to prioritize projects, or track their relative contributions.
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:26 PM on November 20, 2014
Example - for every 1% increase in customer satisfaction, customer retention could be assumed to increase by .x%, and if the customer base is increased by that amount, that can be multipled by the average spend per customer...
I realize there are inevitably some assumptions baked into doing something like that (unless you can research each of those factors), but it would at least give a rough yardstick if you're trying to prioritize projects, or track their relative contributions.
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:26 PM on November 20, 2014
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I'm old school, but to analyze a portfolio of projects financially, I would use Excel and analyze each project and then roll up the results.
posted by elmay at 2:59 AM on November 20, 2014