Projects start and finish in the business – but most project delivery methodologies don’t. They start sometime later when the ‘project’ is officially sanctioned and finish when the project is officially closed down - before most of the benefits have been realized.
They start too late and finish too early.
Too many projects go off the rails at the initiation stage. Before they’ve even officially become ‘projects’ they are doomed to deliver massively compromised results. Project management then manages the doomed project through to completion and delivers to the business’s dissatisfaction.
Closing off the project management processes before many of the benefits have been identified is an exercise in value destruction. Benefits realization still needs to be planned, managed and measured - otherwise you’re relying on ‘hope’!
You need an end-to-end process.
A project needs to start when the idea is formed and as soon as it moves out of buisness-as-usual. This can be in the corporate planning process where it can be assessed to see if it will ever qualify as a priority.
Then the project needs to be optimized as it progresses. TOP provides processes to optimize the scope and the business case so that the resultant project delivers the best value results efficiently and enables the delivery of the desired business outcomes, benefits and value in full.
The project investment then ends when the benefits have been fully realized, measured and reported.
You need a truly end-to-end perspective; from idea to final benefit realization.
TOP ensures the benefits are optimized and then totally realized, not just aimed at.
