Your anxiety
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Many will be familiar with the situation where the strategy has been decided, the way forward agreed and everyone is waiting for something to happen. It's only then that it's realised that no-one is able to define the programme required to translate the strategy and inherent business case into a set of activities that will deliver the mission-critical benefits your organisation requires. This could be for a number of reasons related to capacity, capability, or lack of best practice being used across the organisation.
You worry that these shortcomings leave you unable to answer the following about your programme:
- Are its benefits and the cost of realising them really in balance?
- How will you demonstrate how and when the benefits will be realised?
- Is its desired outcome (still) achievable?
- Is its portfolio of projects (still) the optimum way of achieving the desired outcome?
How we can help you
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Above all, our approach to programme definition and business case management focuses on the early identification of the key benefits arising from the proposed programme or project. This provides a firm foundation for ongoing benefits realisation during the course of delivery. Our approach is shaped on the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) methodology, developed further to capture our own extensive experience of complex programme leadership.
As such our team are quickly able to grasp the essential business issues you face and address them using systematic programme delivery techniques under-pinned by a solid framework. Our consultants will also be able to transfer skills and build your internal capability as they support you – an explicit aim of all our consultancy work.
Our benefits management framework is built around the following key areas:
- Ensuring that the high-level benefits described in the business case are developed into the detail necessary to provide clear alignment between project outputs, programme outcomes, and benefits to be realised by each business area. We advocate doing this early by means of a joint programme team/business team benefits relationship mapping workshop.
- Appointing a business change manager at a senior level to own the overall process of benefits realisation and to develop and manage the benefits realisation schedule.
- Ensuring that benefits are identified, defined clearly using benefits profiles, and owned by individuals spread widely across the business who will champion the necessary business change.
Our business case approach is built around five key 'cases' which are consistent with HM Treasury's Green Book guidance:·
- The Strategic case - whether the vision and desired outcomes actually align with strategic organisational aims
- The Economic case - an examination of all options to determine the most economically viable in terms of return on investment
- The Financial case - to determine whether the proposed solution is actually affordable
- The Commercial case - to consider the optimum commercial route for achieving the desired outcome (make or buy)
- The Achievability case - an examination of whether the organisation actually has the requisite skills in the necessary numbers to be able to deliver the proposed solution.
How we would work with you
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We believe in a collaborative approach in which we operate as an integral part of your management team on a consultative basis. We firmly believe that all aspects of a programme's benefits management must be owned by the business. Our approach is therefore normally focused on helping the business change manager and the network of change champions engage with the rest of the organisation to realise the full benefits of their investment. More often than not we will work alongside your own nominated programme manager, providing support and building knowledge in a way that will allow an early exit for us once the requisite programme definition building blocks are in place, rather than doing the work of the programme management team for you and consequently promoting a dependency culture.
We regard business case development as more than an exercise in creating a written document, rather as a core part of effective programme definition and as the first stage of engaging stakeholders in the need for the proposed programme of activity.
Tools and training we can provide
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We base all our work on an internal programme and project delivery methodology known as mapp™ which is based on industry best practice guidelines constantly updated as a result of our own continual improvement endeavours. The suite of tools provided through mapp™ includes guidance, examples and templates based on best practice for all key elements of programme definition, business cases, and benefits management (for example, to support benefits management we can provide templates and examples of benefits profiles (by which each individual benefit is defined in detail), programme level benefits registers, and benefits realisation schedules.
Because of our belief that benefits realisation must be embraced by people in our clients' organisations we advocate a 'train the trainer' approach to developing the knowledge of those with whom we work, as described above.
We can also offer coaching and mentoring for business leaders (senior responsible owners) who wish to gain greater understanding of their accountabilities for their organisations' programmes and projects, and how they can help create a business environment conducive to programme and project success.
How this could deliver value for you
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Clearly defining the programme, business case and benefits at an early stage ensures that an objective, informed decision about its feasibility is made by senior members of your organisation. This greatly improves the likelihood of success if the programme goes ahead and, in the case that it does not, will help prevent an expensive failure.
Our benefits management approach enables our clients to focus on the real reasons for carrying out their change initiatives and provides a high level of assurance that the return on investment required from any programme of activity is actually achieved. Continual review of business cases during the delivery cycle has allowed regular and conscious decisions to be made about whether to continue or stop an initiative, thus ensuring clear alignment of the portfolio of activity against strategic organisational aims.

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