Set yourself up for success with clear benefits

We’re on a roll!

So far, we’ve defined your project purpose and assembled your initial team.

It’s time to answer the million-dollar question:

What are we building?

The “What” of your project breaks down into two parts:

1. Define the benefits and definition of success

2. Translate that into your scope, and break that up into small steps

Today, we’re diving into that first piece:

Define benefits, not output

As we’ve discussed in the previous weeks, projects are done to capture a new opportunity or solve a problem.

But most project plans are all about the output, and never mention value creation.

The trap has a name: executive scoping.

It’s when the project sponsor confuses the project scope and benefits.

Instead of defining the value that needs to be created, they rattle off a list of features they want.

But who cares about features?

Executive scoping is micromanagement

It takes ownership away from the team, and it kills projects.

Let’s be honest: no one wants a bigger checkout button.

What we really want is a higher conversion rate.

A bigger checkout button might be a way of achieving that, but there could be 100 other ways to do that.

Like we discussed last week: you set a purpose and a goal, and gather the right people. Give them boundaries & guidelines, and let them find out how to get the job done.

Delivering features does not equal value creation.

And that’s why you define benefits first, and translate them into output later.

Not the other way around.

I’ll give you a few examples in a second, but we need to add one other ingredient first…

Definition of success

The second piece of the puzzle is your definition of success.

This is a crucial piece of alignment that many project managers step over.

And many of you on Twitter seem to agree:

And to make sure they can be evaluated, it needs to be measurable.

To “move the needle” may sound great in the boardroom, but good luck telling if it’s done or not.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

What you want is a measurable definition of success.

Going back to our earlier example of the conversion rate: increase the conversion rate of site X from 2.2% to 3%.

A project team can then do their research and conclude that one of many ways to do that is to make the checkout button 27px high. That's an output, and a much better one than "a bigger checkout button".

Let's say you implement it, and the conversion increases to 2.7%.

If the project plan said "a bigger checkout button", that would be a success. But because we defined a measurable benefit, you know you can't close the project yet.

Putting it together

A project goal is not to create deliverables.

Your goal is to create business value.

A benefit is a measurable improvement or advantage, as perceived by the sponsor and stakeholders.

Here’s a way to help you frame it:

• Output: work done

• Outcome: the result of the output

• Benefit: the advantage or improvement

Or as a practical example:

• Output: a new highway junction

• Outcome: more fluid traffic throughput

• Benefit: less congestion during rush hour

And if you then make it measurable: <10min of rush hour delay from point A to point B

Now that is something you can work with!

As always, I’ll leave you with a challenge:

take a project you’re currently working on and ask a few team members what success looks like.

Odds are, you’ll get a list of features and a deadline as an answer.

This is a huge opportunity for you to clarify expectations and increase the chance of a successful project.

Speak up, discuss it with your team and sponsor, and get them on board with real and measurable benefits instead.

That’ll do for this week! Next week, we’re tackling a big one: setting your scope and breaking it down into deliverables.

Until next Tuesday!

Jasper

PS: if you’re looking for previous newsletters to tie all these concepts together, you can find the entire newsletter archive here!