The role of project manager in benefits realization management as a project constraint/driver

Abstract

Expected benefits are the main drivers beyond projects, programs, and portfolios. This is becoming a very well recognized fact across project management practitioners. Although project benefits are always listed in the project or program business cases, many project managers drive their project toward generating specified outputs (deliverables), while not giving enough attention to the expected outcomes (benefits). This may be referred to their belief they do not have a role in this regard, and that it is totally someone else job to ensure benefits realization.A survey was conducted to investigate the awareness and level of implementation of project-level benefits management versus other organizational governance practices across different organizations. The results showed very low implementation level of benefits management practices at project level compared to benefits at higher levels (programs & portfolios) and among other organizational practices and systems (quality management, excellence, risks, performance, etc.).This paper proposes the role of a project manager in benefits management at project level, and introduces a benefits realization management process compatible with the process groups of the Project Management Institute (PMI) body of knowledge which will enable organizations to cascade responsibilities of delivering values to the project manager level.To have a practical tool for implementation, examples of benefits measures were suggested which will play an active role in monitoring the potential project benefits.To validate the authors’ proposal, a real-life case was presented showing how it was planned to implement, the implementation itself, the faced challenges, and finally, the suggestion for more successful implementation in organizations seeking to apply the benefits realization concept.In summary, the results of this paper can be used to: enlarging the project manager responsibilities to acquire the benefits realization, giving a high level 6-step process for benefits management, suggesting a mechanism for managing these benefits through benefits register, benefits realization plan, measures and KPIs and closure business case.