Benefits Management and Business Acceptance Flashcards
Benefit Management & Business Acceptance
What is the difference between benefit management and business acceptance?
Benefits management
ensures that a business change project achieves its defined business benefits.
Business acceptance
looks to ensure that users get what they asked for / need.
What phases of the V model are relevant to benefits management and business realisation?
Benefits Management
Start - Business Case Document - End - Benefits Realisation
Business Acceptance
Start - Requirements Definition - End - Acceptance Testing
funct, tech, program specs, coding, unit integration, system testing
What is the difference between industry-wide and organisation specific CSF’?
Industry Wide
Will be factors that will be common across the industy - such as airline safety
Organisation Specific
Will be something difficult to replicate, a combination of
* desirability
* quality
* value for money
eg - easyjet will go for low cost & BA will go for quality of service
How do KPI’s relate to CSF’s?
KPI’s are the measure against one or more CSF.
eg. a CSF for service quality might have 2 KPI’s measuring:
* average waiting time in A&E
* number of people waiting for operations
What is value proposition?
A value proposition is a set of reasons why a customer wants to use the business.
eg. some customers will value price and some will value quality.
Organisations must decide what their value proposition is.
How do organisations use value chains?
Value chains are split into two sections:
Primary Activities
These are the activities that a customer will interact with and are clear occassions to show where value is added.
Support Activities
These are the activities that a customer might not see but are needed to support the primary activities.
Orgs will analyse their support activities to ensure they are delivering value. If not they are put forward as options for change.
What is an observable benefit?
**An intangible benefit that can not be predicted in advance.
**
An observable benefit can be observed post implementation by a experienced industry professionals.
eg, improved staff morale,
criteria needs to be set in advance & also who will do the assessment
an observable benefit can be upgraded to a measurable one with a survey.
What is a measureable benefit?
A measurable benefit is not provable in advance.
An aspect of performance can be measured during and post implementation and compared against a baseline measure before the change.
eg. Time taken to issue documentation following a system change.
could link to financial eg. shorter waiting times = more payments made.
What is a quantifiable benefit?
These are quantifiable and proven in advance - but are not financial.
There is enough evidence to prove how much improvement (benefit) can be sought.
Eg.
* Time saved by no longer doing a task (not linked to salary)
* number of staff no longer needed to support phone lines - post switch off - moved to other tasks.
What is a financial benefit?
A benefit provable in advance and can be stated in financial terms.
eg: saving on stamps, property rent
Financial benefits will be offset against tangible costs
Benefits Plan
When does a benefits plan need to be created?
At the same time as the financial case (in the business case)
Benefits Plan
What is included in a benefits plan?
- Business Context /background of the project
- Benefit dependency map
- Benefit profiles
Benefits Plan
When might the benefits plan be reviewed?
Scheduled
Planned decision gates as moving through the delivery timeline
Unscheduled
Following a change that affects the project - eg. staff change, policy change, legislation change, difficulties with the project
Benefits Plan
What do you include in a benefit profile?
- ID & Title- A unique identifier
- Impact - how the benefit meets the business objectives
- Timing- When the benefit is expected to be realised
- Interdependencies - between the other benefits
- Dependencies on activity outside of the project
- Owner of the benefit
- Stakeholders others who are associated with the benefit
- Measures -how the benefit will be measured.
- Assumptions & risks - any assumption related to the benefit - including a plan for risks
Benefits Plan
What is the purpose of a benefits dependency network/benefits map?
It is a diagramatic view of what needs to be done within a project to achieve the expected benefits.
Benefits Plan
What are the 4 phases of the benefits dependency network?
From Left to Right:
* Enabling changes
* Business changes
* Benefits
* Objectives
Benefits Plan
What does the Business change represent in the benefits dependency network?
It represents the New Way of Working & are seen as ongoing moving forward
Benefits Plan
What does the Enabling changes represent in the benefits dependency network?
The activity needs to deliver the business change - in cronological order
Testing Principles
What are 4 types of activity that can be used for testing?
- Activity Diagrams
- Decision Trees
- Decision Tables
- State Machine Diagrams
Testing Principles
Activity diagrams can be derived from what other diagramatic document?
Use Case Descriptions
they also provide a calculation for test coverage.
Testing Principles
What do decision trees and tables provide a basis for?
test coverage
A tester can decide to test certain combinations which account for x amount of coverage.
Both work on the idea of conditions and actions.
Testing Principles
What are some of the attributes of a State Machine Diagram?
- Initial State
- State
- Transition (annotated with event)
- Final State
Testing Principles
How is coverage calculated in a state machine diagram?
State Coverage:
number of state / max no of states. eg. 8 states divided by total of 12 = 66% state coverage.
Transition Coverage:
number of events / max no of events. eg. 5 tranisitions divided by total of 10 = 50% transition coverage.
Implementing Business Change
When implementing business change what is meant by parallel running?
What are the pros and cons?
Parallell running is when you have the old and the new system running at the same time.
Pros:
* Reduces risks
* Provides a fail-safe
Cons:
* Double working
* Potential double costs
* No benefits until change-over
* Difficult to wean people off the old ways of working
Implementing Business Change
When implementing business change, what is meant by Direct Changeover?
What are the pros and cons?
Direct Changeover is when you stop using one system on a given day and start to use your new system with no overlap.
Pros
* One set of running costs
* One process to follow
* Start to reap benefits
* Implementation is quicker
Cons
* No fail safe if it isn’t a success or planned properly
* Requires alot of planning upfront to ensure smooth transition
Implementing Business Change
When implementing business change, what is meant by Pilot Implementation?
What are the pros and cons?
Pilot implementation is when you have a subgroup of people using the new system whilst the rest are using the old.
**Pros: **
* Allows testing in a real world environment
* Allows abiility to make changes before expanding further
* Enables groups to get aquainted with new process
* Reduces risk
Cons:
* Can be time consuming
* Can spent lots of time perfecting process
Implementing Business Change
When implementing business change, what is meant by Phased Implementation?
What are the pros and cons?
Phased implementation is going out bit by bit, onboarding at regular intervals until you have changed over 100%
Pros
* A low risk solution
* Allows to spend time with each group, training, listening to feedback and making tweaks
Cons
* Time consuming
* Running both services for a time
* Double (but decreasing) costs
* Later benefit realisation
Implementing Business Change
What strategies can help embed change?
- Allow stakeholders to see and understand the benefits of the change
- Bring stakeholders on the development journey from the outset
- Provide good training with a clear outline/brief of expectation
- Excellent comms and transparency on delivery times
- Allowing for feedback and responding as appropriate
- Provide support needed
Implementing Business Change
What are the four stages of the learning cycle?
Unconcious incompetence
* unaware that don’t know what is needed
Conscious incompetence
* know what you need learn, but not there yet
Conscious competence
* know what you need to know
Unconcious competence
* do without thinking
Implementing Business Change
What are the stages of the SARAH curve?
- Shock
- Anger
- Rejection
- Acceptance
- Hope
Financial Business Case
What is Payback?
Payback is a cashflow calculation whereby you take your project benefits and costs and calculate the point where you will break-even.
Financial Business Case
What is Net Present Value, and how do you calculate it?
Net Present Value is where calculate the true cost of your project.
You discount the cashflow (DCF) and calculate whether you would have been better off investing / not borrowing funds for the project.
You discount the net income from each year by the given % and determine whether the project was worth the investment.
This is the time value of money.
Financial Business Case
What is the Discounted rate and how do you calculate it?
The discounted rate is a companys cost of capital.
eg. A company has £3m of share capital and £1m of loan capital. £4m in total.
The cost of equity @ 12% and the cost of debt @ 8%
(3/4 x 12) + (1/4 x 8) = 9+2 = 11%
(£3m share capital/total capital x 12%) + (£1m loan capital/total capital x 8%) = 11%
