The Benefits of a Benefits Map

One of the most important tools to use when managing a project.

I believe that a benefits map is one of the most important tools to use when managing a project or programme.

They are important for many reasons and I will try to show you a few here as simply as possible. Like all techniques, benefit mapping can be misused and become over complicated, the example I have provided in the image is invented and simple but based on some degree of truth.

The theory behind a benefit map is to show the links between Outputs, Capabilities, Outcomes, Benefits and Strategic Objectives.

Benefits tend to be discussed in relation with the business case for a project or programme. This helps justify the project, in particular it shows why we are spending money producing something and how it contributes towards the benefits and is worthwhile doing.

When projects come under pressure, and they always do, having the ability to show the relationship between an output and the benefits helps us to ensure that the pressure is eased. This is particularly important when we’re asked to compromise the quality of the product in order to finish early. The quality failures do not need to be severe, a reduction in testing rather than removing testing. A benefits map should show the impact this will have on the benefits.

Similarly when we face pressure to reduce costs, pressure to reduce the time spent on the work or pressure to add things to the scope of a project, the benefits map helps to show the impact.

Those reasons alone should be enough to persuade project managers to consider using this technique, but it gets better because we are also demonstrating that the outputs build into a capability. If we fail to deliver some of the outputs we won’t provide a reliable or effective capability and we will then be expecting the users to work around this in their own time.

In a nutshell if we don’t put enough effort INTO producing the output we don’t get the outcome we want, the more we put in the more we get out.

This is where things get interesting.

The capability we provide to the users will lead to an outcome, and we will be wanting positive outcomes not negative ones. The negative outcomes lead us to dis-benefits and the poorer the capabilities we provide the greater the dis-benefit. This is because the business needs to change in some way in order to achieve and outcome.

However there are times when we don’t know what sort of effort is needed to build capabilities and we could experiment with something like a Minimum Viable Product and discover that we can achieve the positive outcome with the least amount of effort. This is rare but still possible.

Let’s build on this a little further, to achieve the outcome we want, the capability needs be used by someone somewhere in the business. To achieve this outcome requires people to change the way they work and people tend not to like change. The benefits map gives us a visual representation of the fact that we need to change the day to day business, and this needs time and effort in some part of the operational environment.

This is where resistance to change manifests itself and recognises that someone needs to help people through the change, I would suggest that we all know of projects that delivered something that was never used by anyone. There is another benefit of a benefits map, it helps identify risks too.

The example in the diagram above shows that in order to reduce homelessness, paying benefits or giving stuff away might ease the burden on individuals but it doesn’t solve the long term problem.

The benefits map is fictional but it is based on a story you might find interesting about how a homeless man, Stewart, was paid benefits for 14 years and in all that time he remained homeless, along came someone who encouraged Stewart to help himself and with almost no money he’s now heading towards earning a living and his own place.

Stewart's Story