Benefit Realisation Management

This book is an update from Bradley's first edition (2006). The second edition provides a portfolio management perspective as well as a project perspective on benefits realisation. It also is produced in full colour which is useful for colour coding results, benefits and other aspects of measures and performance measurement.

Edition 2 also has an extensive glossary of terms. This is useful to not only readers of this book but also researchers looking for an authoritative definition to cite for the technical terms.

The book is written by a practitioner with the benefit of 25 years experience and also the benefit of feedback on the first edition of this book. This issue is also produced in colour so that it is quite effective in instances where colour codes used for performance is essential, that the impact of this is not lost through having a greyscale publication.

The book is structured in four parts. Part 1 (Chapters 1‐7) covers fundamentals and foundations of benefits realisation. Some of this is not new such as the short chapters on stakeholders and the way that the text is treated is very practitioner‐friendly and so does not contain the depth of theory that would be more useful for academic purposes. The bibliography is sparse and that presents a draw back. However, the book contains very valuable “how to” materials and so I felt that it works well to be used in tandem with other texts that are rigorously researched in terms of the relevant academic literature. Chapters are simply presented and immediately usable by practitioners and they provide stimulating ideas for researchers. My main concern with the term benefits realisation is that it does sound very much like jargon, however, when you read the book it is clearly about performance measurement, definition of requirements and working out what output and outcomes are intended from projects and programs of work. This is where access to the performance management literature for (see for example Neeley, 2002), can be very useful. I could see, when reading through Chapters 5‐7, that other available books and the plethora on program and portfolio management literature would fill theoretical underpinning gaps for these chapters. Another way of looking at this book is that it provides a very useful primer and anchor for PM practice. Either way, it has sufficient merit in being a useful text worth studying rather than merely being a “dummies guide to performance management”.

Part 2 (Chapter 8‐23) amplifies concepts in Part 1 and introduces tools, techniques and approaches that are well illustrated and not difficult to follow. Use of colour in tables and figures is effective and I could imagine that novices and early career project managers who are asked to introduce benefits management would find this a very useful and easily applied resource. I believe that many of my colleagues that I have supervised at doctoral level who are senior practicing project managers would be enthusiastic about using this section to mentor and support their colleagues. Additionally, with the advantage of a wide appreciation of the background literature, they could make better sense why the tools, techniques and standards offered in the section may work or how they may be misapplied.

Part 3 (Chapter 24) applies the benefits realisation concept to portfolio management. This chapter is another extension to the project benefits realisation concept where the context changes to a larger organisational focus. Section 4 takes this even further to an organisational perspective. Again this chapter appears practical and easy to read and not too difficult to attempt to implement.

My impression of the first edition (Bradley, 2006) was that it is a valuable book that I would recommend to practitioners who are expected to respond to the challenge of “realising benefits”, who hear the jargon and are unsure what exactly it means and how performance of project outputs and outcomes can be defined and measured. This second edition takes the ideas to the program and portfolio level. Often we struggle with nuances of ideas because of a lack of adequate language. I supervised several doctoral theses in this general area (Bourne, 2005; Nogeste, 2006) and I can see how I would have recommended this Bradley book as a useful resource along with the plethora of literature I could suggest had it been available at the time that these theses were being written. I can see a place for the term benefits realisation as a concept (or perhaps jargon, or to be more charitable an extension of language relating to performance management). It lies, from my understanding and interpretation of this book, somewhere within requirements definition and briefing, strategic performance establishment measurement (Neeley, 2002; Neeley et al., 2002) and is linked to project success measures.

This is certainly a valuable reference book worth keeping handy whether you are an academic or a PM practitioner.