How to Govern Projects Based on the Benefits Delivered

• Deliver real business value within the first month—no excuses, no waiting.

• Traditional governance delays and dilutes impact; benefits-based governance builds proof early and often.

• You don’t need full systems, full rollouts, or full specs—just the guts to deliver value incrementally.

In Why Project Governance is Fundamentally Flawed, I highlight how traditional governance fails to hold teams accountable for the business benefits promised when funding is first sought.

But is measuring progress based on business benefits actually possible?

Yes, it is.

I'm speaking from experience across about 200 projects in Australia, the UK, and the US since 2012. These projects range from 2 months at $300k to 18 months at $4m.

Regardless of size, each project realised tangible business benefits within the first month.

Achieving this requires breaking the traditional delivery model, which typically delivers a system to all users only at the project's end—even in most agile projects, where incremental builds aren't rolled out until a final acceptance testing phase.

For benefits-based governance, we must deliver benefits right from the project's start. Progress can then be tracked directly against our goals.

This means delivering a fraction of the solution to a small audience soon after commencement, then expanding incrementally.

Consider a real-world example: rolling out a new call centre solution to 2,500 agents over 18 months, aiming to halve call handling time for 80% of calls. Our initial rollout was to just one agent, delivered 16 business days after project kickoff. Many capabilities weren't built yet: no credit card processing, calls were taken only from account holders, and only one of more than 30 eventual system integrations was in place. Orders were manually rekeyed into downstream systems. However, we successfully reduced call times for this agent by 80%, significantly surpassing expectations.

Every two weeks, we added integrations and expanded system capabilities, progressively managing more edge cases until project completion. Remarkably, by month four, the savings in call handling costs had fully covered the project budget—impossible with traditional delivery methods.

Initially, incremental delivery often meets scepticism from IT teams, who carry decades of traditional assumptions. But questioning these assumptions and addressing their underlying needs differently can overcome these objections:

• Full documentation and upfront sign-off: Required only if governance is scope, time, and cost-based. Benefits-based management removes the need for these interim deliverables, reducing waste.

• Complete system design before release: Driven by concerns about scalability. Incremental rollout enables risk identification and mitigation at minimal impact and cost.

• Upfront infrastructure provisioning: Outdated with current cloud infrastructure, which immediately scales without upfront investment, eliminating associated risks.

These objections share a pattern: they originate from valid risk management concerns but can be effectively managed or avoided using modern approaches.

Initially, benefits-based governance might subconsciously feel riskier—an evolutionary reaction. Ironically, it's actually far more effective in managing financial risk, as project spending is continuously justified by incremental benefits. Traditional governance risks 100% of the project budget before any benefit measurement is even possible—and often overlooked when eventually implemented.

I haven't used traditional governance since 2011 and highly recommend benefits-based governance—it’s more enjoyable, less stressful, and ultimately more satisfying.

When you're ready, here's how I can help:

Andrew Walker
Consulting to for-purpose CEOs to deliver more impact with existing teams and systems - by freeing humans up from admin.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-walker-the-impatient-futurist/

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