The term Benefits Assurance was coined [note 1] to describe new ways of coping with the uncertainty inherent in e-change projects. The focus of Benefits Assurance is the delivery of a beneficial outcome acceptable to the organisation's stakeholders whilst explicitly acknowledging the need to accommodate and control the intrinsic risks that the project involves.
Benefits Assurance recognises that benefits and risk are flip-sides of the same change coin. Understanding the type of change being conceived by the project is therefore fundamental to getting a grip on the inherent uncertainty and constructing a project process that allows it to be managed pro-actively.
Benefits Assurance can be seen as an analogue of Quality Assurance. Just as the latter is about creating a project environment that can assure that the deliverables of the project are produced as specified and planned, so then should Benefits Assurance be about creating the environment that can assure the delivery of the business benefits of the project. Quality Assurance is a whole lifecycle concept and, by analogy, we argue that this applies also to Benefits Assurance.
Benefits Assurance is a project management process that complements the more traditional forms of project management planning, monitoring and control. The Benefits Assurance process supports the full lifecycle of a project from conception through planning, execution and monitoring to implementation and review. It consists of a set of activities supported by techniques that extend the traditional project manager’s ‘toolkit’ and is essentially a tool for project control. Standard project management theory and practice tends to emphasise the activities of a programme at the expense of its purpose. Benefits Assurance provides a counter-balance by providing the means to maintain a focus on the goal of benefits realisation throughout the project.