Starting 2025 Strong – Five Strategies to Align Project Benefits with Business Goals

Introduction

Over the decades, practitioners and researchers have consistently highlighted that projects—particularly IT projects—fail to deliver their intended business value at an alarming rate of 34% to 70%, even when they meet scope, schedule, and budget targets. These failures can derail strategic plans, hinder growth, and lead to significant waste of resources. As organizations prepare to implement their strategies in 2025, aligning project benefits with overarching business goals is no longer optional—it’s an essential requirement for success.

Demonstrating measurable benefits from any project—whether in IT, construction, manufacturing, or other industries—is essential for driving organizational success and maintaining a competitive edge. But how can organizations effectively bridge the gap between project outputs and strategic outcomes? In this post, we delve into five actionable strategies, backed by research on benefits realization and organizational change, to help ensure your projects deliver meaningful value and drive lasting business success.

1. Develop an Initiating Document

Every successful project begins with a solid foundation, ensuring clarity and purpose from the outset. As Stephen Covey famously stated in his principle, “begin with the end in mind,” initiating documents are crucial for defining a project’s objectives and desired outcomes from the start. These documents, created during the initial phase of a project, serve as the blueprint for successful execution. Common examples include the business case, project charter, project brief, and terms of reference.

Let’s face it: few people truly enjoy creating initiating documents. They can feel tedious and time-consuming, much like completing your annual tax return. However, their importance cannot be overstated. Project executives and team members often see these documents as compliance exercises—something to tick off a list to gain approval from the project management office. Unfortunately, this mindset overlooks their potential as powerful tools for enhancing the realization of project benefits.

When these documents are poorly crafted or missing altogether, the consequences can be significant:

• Unrealized benefits: Poor tracking and unclear linkage to organizational goals prevent the project from delivering its intended value.
• Disorganized execution: A lack of foundational guidance leads to confusion and inefficiencies.
• Resource misallocation: Undefined priorities result in wasted time, effort, and funds.
• Higher risk of failure: Overlooking critical risks and stakeholder needs increases the likelihood of setbacks and delays.

Once your foundation is set with a project initiating document, the next step is identifying the challenges your project aims to address and the benefits it intends to deliver.

2. Identify Pain Points and Benefits

Your phone is on its last legs. The battery dies after just two hours, calls frequently drop, and the cracked screen makes reading messages frustrating. You’re ready for an upgrade. At the store, the sales agent highlights the latest model’s standout features: an advanced camera system, next-gen processing power, and an immersive display. Although you’re unsure what these terms mean, they sound impressive. But here’s the question: are these really “benefits,” or are they “features”?

The difference between features and benefits is often misunderstood, whether it’s in electronics, appliances, or projects.

• Features: Accessing your payslip through your company’s HR website or renewing your passport online.
• Benefits: Reduced time spent applying for a passport or improved employee experience through 24/7 payslip access.

A pain point represents a dissatisfying experience or perceived waste of resources when using a service or product. Organizations often approve projects to address pain points, making it critical that project benefits directly alleviate these challenges. If they don’t, what’s the purpose of the project?

Initiating documents should include a detailed list of perceived pain points that project executives, sponsors, and beneficiaries expect the project to address. It’s important to note that the absence of a solution is not a pain point. For example:

• Not a pain point: The lack of a contract management application.
• Actual pain point: Excessive time (4–6 months) required to prepare and execute basic contracts.

When phrasing pain points, use negative statements to reflect the challenge or dissatisfaction. Conversely, benefits should highlight positive change, often using adjectives to describe improvement:

• Pain point: Prolonged contract cycle times.
• Benefit: Reduced contract cycle times or increased regulatory compliance.

By articulating pain points, project teams can ensure their efforts address real business needs. Once these challenges are identified, specific benefits that directly address them should be defined. Aligning these benefits with broader business objectives ensures that your project delivers meaningful and strategic value.

3. Define Metrics and Assumptions

A benefit is a measurable improvement that is valuable to one or more stakeholders, often serving as the resolution to a pain point. In my earlier blog, Why Benefits Realization Matters More Than Ever in Today’s Projects, I discussed the definitions of benefits and benefits realization, emphasizing their importance in project success. A critical part of this definition is the term “measurable improvement.” As Peter Drucker famously stated, “what gets measured gets managed.” This underscores the necessity of clear metrics for tracking benefits realization. Without them, demonstrating a project’s success becomes impossible.

Types of Benefits:

• Tangible Benefits
  • Examples: Increased profits, reduced costs.
  • Characteristics: Quantifiable and easy to measure.
• Intangible Benefits
  • Examples: Improved customer loyalty, enhanced employee engagement.
  • Characteristics: Difficult to quantify but often impactful on strategy.

Despite their strategic value, intangible benefits are often overlooked in project selection, as some sponsors perceive them as less measurable or important. However, research indicates often intangible benefits have the most significant impact on organizational strategy.

Measuring Intangible Benefits

Douglas Hubbard, in his book How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business, challenges the perception that intangibles are immeasurable. Key insights include:

• If something matters and can be observed, it can be measured as an amount or range.
• While identifying metrics for intangible benefits is challenging, ignoring them risks sidelining important outcomes.

Importance of Assumptions

Assumptions are external factors outside the project team’s control but critical to realizing benefits. For example:

• Scenario: Implementing a contract management system.
• Assumption: Staff are familiar with and willing to adopt digital tools.
• Risk: If this assumption is false (e.g., employees lack digital skills), benefits realization could fail.

In many cases, assumptions are synonymous with required change management activities. Unchecked assumptions increase risks and can jeopardize the achievement of project benefits.

With a clear understanding of metrics and assumptions, the next step is assigning accountability. Accountability ensures ownership and sustained focus on realizing project benefits—let’s explore this in the next section.

4. Assign Accountability

Ownership and accountability are fundamental to benefits realization. As Pat Summitt said, “Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.” This principle holds especially true in the context of managing project benefits. Without clearly defined accountability, even the most well-planned benefits risk slipping through the cracks.

In public sector IT projects, findings from my research and supporting literature emphasize the significance of the Benefits Owner role. This individual is pivotal in ensuring that planned benefits are realized by:

• Identifying and structuring benefits during the early phases.
• Maintaining oversight of benefits throughout the project lifecycle and post-implementation.
• Engaging stakeholders through communication and marketing activities to promote benefits realization.

Accountability must go beyond naming a benefits owner. For optimal effectiveness, benefits owners should have:

1. A clear and powerful mandate, backed by organizational leadership.
2. Authority to make decisions on benefit-related activities, such as scope adjustments or resource allocation.
3. Support and collaboration from cross-functional teams and external stakeholders.

Who Should Be the Benefits Owner?

Selecting the right benefits owner is critical to ensuring successful benefits realization. Here are key considerations for identifying the most suitable individual:

• Operational Ownership: Ideally, the benefits owner should be someone responsible for the areas directly impacted by the benefits, such as a department or process leader.
• Strong Mandate: Choose someone with the authority to make decisions and allocate resources to ensure benefits realization.
• Relevant Expertise: The benefits owner should have a deep understanding of the project domain and its alignment with the organization’s strategic goals.

Once accountability is established, the focus shifts to ensuring that benefits realization efforts are transparent and measurable. Tracking and reporting benefits is the cornerstone of demonstrating success, identifying gaps, and making data-driven decisions. In the next section which outlines the fifth and final step, we’ll explore tools, strategies, and best practices to track and report benefits effectively.

5. Track and Report Benefits

Tracking and reporting benefits is the cornerstone of realizing project value. This step ensures that organizations not only deliver the intended outcomes but also maintain transparency and accountability throughout the project lifecycle. By implementing a structured approach, your team can demonstrate value, align efforts with business goals, and foster a culture of continuous improvement. Here’s how to effectively track and report benefits:

1. Establish a Benefits Tracker
   • Create a comprehensive Benefits Tracker to document planned and realized benefits.
   • Include details such as benefit description, key performance indicators (KPIs), baseline data, and progress updates.
2. Define and Measure KPIs
   • Align each benefit with clear, measurable KPIs to track progress effectively.
   • Continuously monitor these KPIs to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities for improvement.
3. Implement Regular Reviews
   • Schedule periodic reviews to assess benefit realization against the plan.
   • Update the Benefits Tracker with both quantitative and qualitative insights. Updates should occur whenever stakeholders begin using project deliverables.
4. Capture Unexpected Outcomes
   • Document and evaluate any unintended benefits or fortuitous benefits. These are benefits not planned but have been realized.
   • Adjust strategies based on these findings to optimize future initiatives.
5. Transition Benefits to Operations
   • Ensure a smooth handover of benefit ownership to operational teams post-project completion.
   • Provide training, resources, and guidelines to sustain realized benefits.

By following these steps, your organization can transform benefits tracking and reporting into a strategic advantage. It’s not just about meeting targets; it’s about building a legacy of value and continuous growth.

Conclusion

As we have recently embarked on 2025, aligning project benefits with business goals is no longer a luxury—it’s a strategic imperative. The five strategies outlined here provide a clear roadmap to ensure your projects deliver real, measurable value. From setting the right foundation with initiating documents to tracking and reporting benefits transparently, each step reinforces the connection between project outcomes and organizational success.

Remember, the key to thriving in an ever-evolving business landscape lies in more than just delivering projects on time and within budget—it’s about realizing benefits that drive meaningful change. By adopting these strategies, you’ll not only strengthen your organization’s ability to execute its strategic vision but also position yourself as a leader in maximizing project value.

So, as you start the year strong, ask yourself: Are your projects poised to create lasting impact? With the right focus, tools, and accountability in place, the answer can be a resounding yes. Let 2025 be the year your organization not only meets its goals but exceeds them by turning projects into catalysts for sustainable growth and success.

Love Hearing from You

What strategies have you found effective in aligning project benefits with business goals? Share your thoughts in the comments below or connect with me directly on LinkedIn.