IN PROGRESS - Review from Foundation Delegate Book Flashcards
These are not questions - pg 6 - 76
What are the Objectives of benefits management?
2.5
- Forecast benefits are complete (all sources of potential value are identified), realizable and represent value for money.
- Forecast benefits are realized in practice, including by ensuring the required enabling, business and behavioural change take place.
- Benefits are realized as early as possible and are sustained for as long as possible.
- Emergent or unplanned benefits are captured and leveraged (and any disbenefits are minimized) – so we optimize the benefits realized and value for money achieved.
- We can demonstrate the above – not just as part of the framework of accountability, but also so we learn what works as a basis for continuous improvement.
The benefits management cycle consists of which five practices?
1.5, pg 7
Identify and Quantify
Value and Appraise
Plan
Realize
Review
What are the barriers to effective Benefits Management?
- Measurement Difficulties
- Long time lag between initiative planning and benefits realization
- Staff leave
- Failure to collect baseline data
- Benefits measures unrelated to the MIS
- Some benefits are difficult to measure
- Attribution
- Initiative shut down before benefits are fully realized
Guide Reference 4.3.1, pgs 49-50
Barrier 2. Common Misconceptions – benefits management is not…
Barrier 2. Common Misconceptions – benefits management is not…
- A silver bullet
- An ‘out of the box’ solution
- Used to justify a preferred option
- Applied only at initiative level
- A linear/sequential process
- A specialism
- An additional bureaucracy
- Concerned with making the inevitable happen.
Guide Reference 4.3.2, pgs 50-51
Barrier 3 The ‘knowing-doing’ gap is defined as
A paradox in many areas of management, in that good practice is known but rarely applied.
Guide Reference 4.3.3, pg 51
Barrier 4 What are the Cognitive Biases?
Cognitive biases include:
- Over-confidence / The Planning Fallacy
- The Illusion of control
- The status quo bias
- The sunk cost effect
- Confirmation bias and being slow to chang
- Framing
- Mental accounting
- Ignoring regression to the mean
- The affect heuristic
- The endowment effect
Guide Reference 4.3.4 & Appendix D, pg 52
List the Barriers 3 & 4 The ‘Knowing-Doing Gap’
& Cognitive biases: Solutions
- Acceptance of failure
- Review results and their causes
- Independent & regular review
- Training
- Focus on practices & principles
- Apply the Key Success Characteristics of effective benefits management…
Guide Reference 4.3.5
List the KSCs of effective Benefits Management
- Active
- Evidence-based
- Transparent
- Benefits-led
- Forward-looking
- Managed across the full business change lifecycle
Guide Reference 1.5, 4.4
The 7 Benefits Management Principles are:
Align Benefits with Strategy Driver-based analysis
Start with the end in mind (SWTEIM)
Utilize Successful Delivery Methods
Integrate benefits with performance management
Manage benefits from a portfolio perspective
Apply effective governance
Develop a Value culture
Guide Reference 1.5, 3.1, pg 25
Principle 1: The service profit chain includes:
- Internal services quality
- Employee Satisfaction
- Customer Value
- Customer Satisfaction
- Customer Loyalty
Guide Reference 3.2, pg 27
Principle 2: Start with the end in mind (SWTEIM)
Table 3.1 pg 30 Activity-centred and benefits-led change initiatives compared
Activity-centred change initiatives:
- The initiative is adopted because it is ‘the right thing to do’ or a ‘no-brainer’. Where objectives are set, they are defined mainly in long-term, nonspecific or process-based terms, with no clear linkage from the activity to strategic contribution.
- The initiative’s champion urges managers and employees to be patient, take a long term perspective, and ‘keep the faith’ as the approach will come good in the end.
- Progress is measured in terms of measures of activity – people trained, surveys completed etc.
- Staff experts and consultants drive the programme.
- Substantial investment is required upfront before any significant benefits are seen.
- The approach is based on advocacy rather than evidence. There is no real learning from experience since the solution promoted is accepted as orthodoxy.
Benefits-led change initiatives
- Benefits are identified and the contribution to organizational objectives is clear; and there are measurable, specific, short-term performance improvement goals even when the change effort is longterm.
- The atmosphere is one of impatience for benefits even when the programme is a long-term change initiative.
- Progress is measured in terms of benefits using both leading and lagging indicators.
- Business managers take the lead with staff experts and consultants helping them to achieve benefits.
- Incremental and modular approaches are adopted with quick wins being used to generate enthusiasm for the initiative.
- The approach is driven by evidence about what works – learnings are fed-back to provide insight into the design and prioritization of the next phase of the initiative.
Guide Reference 3.3, pg 30
Principle 3: Utilize Successful Delivery Methods
- Tailor formal PPM delivery methods
- Apply agile / modular development approaches
- A rigorous start gate with regular stage/gate reviews throughout the business change lifecycle
- Incremental investment decisions, based on the technique of ‘staged release of funding’
- On-going participative stakeholder engagement bringing the ‘voice of the customer’ into the design & delivery of initiatives via customer insight
- Adopting a forward-looking perspective based on learning, feedback and insight throughout the business change lifecycle
- Encompassing business and behavioural change – including consistent approaches to change management.
Guide Reference 3.4, pgs 33-34
Enabling change
outputs “the thing we are building”
Business change
enables us to use output “what operations changes do we need to make for staff to make as BAU?”
Strategic driver
“what is the problem?” “What is the opportunity we are trying to grab?” This is usually a statement of fact
