Role of Change in Benefits Realisation

Projects frequently fail to deliver their promised benefits despite meeting traditional success criteria of scope, time, and budget. Projects evolve, are the benefits you originally established going to be delivered by your new outputs?

Benefits Management

The most important question any project leader can ask is WHY?

This simple question sits at the heart of why so many projects fail to deliver their promised value despite meeting traditional success criteria. When project teams lose sight of why a project exists and what benefits it should deliver, they often end up creating outputs that fail to generate meaningful outcomes.

Many organisations make the fundamental mistake of assuming that benefits will emerge automatically once project outputs are delivered. This assumption proves consistently false because benefits can be eroded throughout any points of change in the project. Benefits must be regularly reviewed and monitored throughout the project’s life cycle, especially after the benefits have been achieved.

Output vs Outcome vs Benefit

In essence, output produces outcomes that create benefits.

Output	a deliverable, a tangible product or service created by a project or process. E.g: New resource planning software
Outcome	the results or changes that occur as a direct consequence of the outputs. E.g: Streamlined business processes, improved data visibility, and enhanced decision-making capabilities
Benefit	the measurable improvements or advantages that result from the outcomes. E.g: reduced processing costs, faster response times, and improved regulatory compliance

Benefits and Change

Change management and benefits realisation connect inseparably because benefits represent organisational transformation in measurable terms.

Consider a project implementing new resource planning software across an organisation. The output involves the installed and configured software system. The intended outcomes include streamlined business processes, improved data visibility, and enhanced decision-making capabilities. The expected benefits encompass reduced processing costs, faster response times, and improved regulatory compliance.

However, none of these benefits will emerge unless people fundamentally alter their behaviour. This disconnect occurs because benefits only emerge when people genuinely change how they work, think, and behave. Employees must learn new processes, abandon familiar workflows, and embrace different tools and procedures. Managers must learn to trust and act upon new information sources. Senior leaders must modify their decision-making approaches based on enhanced data availability. Without these behavioural changes, the enterprise system becomes merely an expensive output that delivers no meaningful organisational value. This explains why traditional project management approaches often prove insufficient. They focus intensively on delivering outputs according to predetermined specifications, timelines, and budgets, but pay inadequate attention to whether those outputs will actually drive the behavioural changes necessary for benefits realisation. Projects may be declared successful from a delivery perspective whilst completely failing from a value creation perspective.

High adoption rates generate high benefits, whilst low adoption rates generate minimal benefits regardless of how sophisticated the technical solution might be. This fundamental principle should influence every decision about project approach, timeline, and resource allocation.

Change Management

Several proven tools and frameworks help project managers effectively integrate change management with benefits realisation efforts. These tools provide structured approaches for planning, implementing, and monitoring the changes necessary for value creation.

● Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement Planning: Identify all individuals and groups who will be affected by project changes, understanding their current state and desired future state, and developing targeted strategies to support their transition.

● Change Impact Assessment: Evaluate how proposed changes will affect different parts of the organisation. This assessment should consider not only immediate impacts but also the ripple effects that changes might create throughout interconnected organisational systems.

●Communication and Training Plans: Ensure that affected stakeholders understand why changes are necessary, what benefits they will bring, and how to successfully navigate the transition period. Effective communication connects individual changes to organisational benefits, helping people understand their specific role in creating value. Training plans must address not only technical skills but also the mindset shifts necessary for new ways of working.

●Resistance Management Strategies: Address the natural human tendency to resist unfamiliar changes. Rather than viewing resistance as an obstacle to overcome through force, effective change management treats resistance at the root and sees it as valuable feedback that can inform better implementation strategies.

●Change Readiness Assessments: Evaluate an organisation's capacity to successfully implement and sustain required changes. These assessments consider factors such as leadership support, resource availability, past change experiences, and cultural factors that might support or hinder change efforts. 

Building Sustainable Change for Long-term Benefits

The most successful organisations develop cultures that embrace change as a source of competitive advantage and build systems that support the continuous realisation of benefits over time.

At PMLogic, we go beyond delivering outputs — we help ensure your projects generate lasting value. By integrating Benefits Management and Change Management, we support teams to achieve real, measurable outcomes.

📩 Ready to turn your project outputs into meaningful benefits?

Let’s connect:

Get in Touch