When Business Value Doesn’t Meet Expectations

It might seem like a hopeless situation when business value doesn’t meet expectations. Here are a few things to look at for potential opportunities for improvement.

Revisit your estimates. Compare the estimates used to justify the project to the business results. Opportunities may arise from this, including:

• Business activities included in project justification aren’t being executed. Investigate whether you can launch these activities to generate business value.
• Assumptions might have been inaccurate. You might achieve business benefit improvements by bringing those assumptions to fruition. For example, the project assumed internal resources would run a new system, but expensive contractors were assigned instead. Switching to internal resources could generate a positive return for the business.
• Estimates might have been inaccurate. Understanding those inaccuracies can help create better estimates in the future. 

Cut underperforming elements. For example, in a building, you can convert extra ground floor conference rooms to leased retail space. You can apply this concept to IT as well. Consider cutting IT components that aren’t generating benefits. 

Re-examine your deliverables and training. Evaluate whether people are using your project deliverables as intended. If they aren’t, they might not have received adequate training. Find the root cause for the disconnect between intent and actual usage. Update and deliver new training to improve results. In addition, redesigning deliverables might help improve outcomes.

Trim maintenance or licensing expenses. Most project deliverables have ongoing operational costs, such as maintenance, software, other product licensing, and help support. Look for opportunities to trim the costs of these services. Although this cost cutting might reduce the efficiency and quality of your deliverables, changes that result in benefits that exceed costs is worthwhile. 

Look for secondary benefits. Business cases don’t address secondary benefits because they are hard to estimate. However, now that deliverables are in place, you can get measurement data. For example, a product might not sell as much as expected. Yet, discussing that product with customers might generate sales of other products. Also, project outcomes could free up employee time. That time might provide the opportunity to pursue other beneficial projects.

While it’s never good when a benefits shortfall occurs, don’t give up! These are a few of the possibilities you can explore to end your benefits shortfall.

What other actions might you take to bring business value back on track? Share with us in the comments section.

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I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.