Usually a project is considered successful if groups of the project parameters like cost, time and scope are properly selected and match the expectations of project stakeholders. Some people devote much time and many efforts trying to initiate, plan, track and manage their projects, but they often don’t give a great deal of thoughts to actually the benefits of each project.
When initiating a new project, identifying benefits seems to be a quite obvious goal for the project. However, many projects are initiated with what seems to be a good idea but not an identified benefit. Along with such project parameters like cost, time and scope, the benefit is a particular and specific parameter that tends to be one of the most significant things that we should be focused on when planning and initiating our projects.
Your project becomes successful if the expected benefits are derived. This is the core of benefits management for projects. Benefits management is the way to put your focus in the most appropriate place by asking the questions like: ‘Why am I doing this project?‘ and ‘Why am I still doing this project?‘
Realizing benefits concerns the start and end of any project. When we set the expected benefits, this means we set a ‘background’ for our project or an actual reason behind the initiation and execution of the project. And the benefits will surround each project’s stage – all the time during the project life cycle. That’s why project benefits management is about all the process groups of project management, including Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring&Controlling, and Closing.