The weakest link

Benefit Realisation management (BRM) has been described an the glue that binds together all the other management techniques. Dr Richard Breese looks at the impact of the recession on its development.

In the 1990s and early 2000s I worked in a local government, managing community regeneration programmes. The need to account for the effective use of public money meant that Benefits Realisation Management (BRM) was an essential part of the management and reporting systems we used, although we didnt call it by this name. I used these experiences in a talk to the APM Programme management SIG in July, 2008, entitled: Benefit Realisation in Programme Management: Logic or Lottery. Just recently, Ive further reflected  on the opportunities and potential problems with BRM as a concept, in lecturing to Masters level IT students on change management.

I would suggest that in its course towards maturity, BRM needs to get to grips with two related constraints upon its impact. First, there are organisational contexts in which BRM is unlikely to occur or if it does occur, is distorted and just becomes a post hoc realisation of actions already decided upon. Second, BRM relies on cause and effect relationships being predicted, modelled and managed, in an uncertain world where key assumptions can be turned upside down, particularly in unstable economic conditions.

There are three main reasons for a benefit realisation deficit. The first is where other factors are more important than benefits realisation. A typical example would be where there is a rush to spend up on a budget before the end of the financial year. Making sure the money gets spent becomes the main priority. A more insidious instance is where who gets the contract is more important than what is achieved through it. In these instances, benefits realisation would be a smokescreen to justify an action which has been taken on other grounds.

A second reason for a benefit realisation deficit is where the rationale for a project or programme is driven by assumed benefits, not subject to any reasoning process. Examples of this occur where programmes are initiated by political imperative weve got to be seen to be doing something, and this is what we are going to do. Other instances occur when rationale for programmes is driven by factors such as intuition, optimism and opportunism, rather than a solid business case.

Thirdly, a benefit realisation deficit can occur when BRM doesnt cover a key part of the relevant chain of benefits. A typical example is where benefits realisation is confined to the achievement of capital investment, rather than the subsequent use of new facilities or infrastructure to enhance business effectiveness or quality of life.

Interest in BRM first arose in response to uncertainty on the returns from investment in IT, and BRM aims t reduce the number of case where benefits are ignored or assumed. However, there may be legitimate reasons for limiting the extent of BRM exercises. These include:

1. There are so many different kinds of benefits that it is not worthwhile to cover them al. Many benefits are not easily measurable. Benefits realisation might only be applied to those parts of the programme that are delivering the most important benefits.
2. Benefits are ideally analysed and managed over the long term, but this may be impractical. It is especially problematic where capital investments are involved, when key the key benefits are only realised after the capital project has finished
3. Benefits at higher levels up to the vision are influenced by so many factors outside the remit of the programme that it is not considered justified to include them in BRM.

Organisations might be put off BRM because of the sheer complexity and unpredictability of benefits maps. All investments involve a chain of benefits that rely upon cause and effect assumptions which only hold in given contexts. In the recession, many of the causal relationships between business parameters have to be reassessed in different supply and demand conditions, and unintended consequences become even more prevalent.

For example, MSP uses the example of benefit maps of the legacy of an international sports complex, which assume buoyant markets for housing and industrial development. In the current economic climate land might remain undeveloped, and the benefits map would look very different. There would be further consequences for the package of development proposals and the prospects for local regeneration.

Even the simplest of projects involves cause and effect relationships at each stage in the benefit chain, which rely upon assumptions that may not hold in practice. When business environment is stable, the risks may be low, but in the present economic climate the chances of the benefits chain breaking down at some point are that much greater.

In community regeneration use has been made of a number of different tools available to analyse cause and effect, such as logical frameworks, realistic evaluation and theories of change. The recent emphasis by government on evidence-based policy has given rise to more systematic reviews of the body of research studies, in order to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of public policy instruments.

My own research has looked at how the dimensional complexity of human activities complicates the transferability of cause and effect relationships from one context to another, using an analytical tool called the Operational Dimensions Framework (ODF). However, none of the tools available can make the generation of benefits maps a simple routine task. In my view, generating a good benefits map is an art as much as science , and depends upon accumulated knowledge and skills in the field in question.

So what are the implications for BRM? It s not a panacea to take the pain out of project and programme management, but I would argue that the more uncertain the benefits, the more important it is to get to grips with the assumptions and risks which may affect their realisation.

• Richard Breese became a member of the APM in 200, when he was a manager of regeneration programmes in South Yorkshire. He now pursues his interests in project and programme management through his consultancy business, ODF Perspective, and though lecturing in change management at Sheffield business school.