Public defence: Sinan Sigurd Tanilkan

Background

Numerous papers have reported on information systems investments that fail to deliver the intended benefits. To aid in this situation, research on managing the benefits of software investments has been ongoing for the last 30 years. Although benefits management practices are linked with success in realizing benefits, there are still areas of benefits management that are not understood, and the realization of benefits remains a problem for practitioners.

Objectives

Against this backdrop, this thesis has two overall objectives; first, to increase our understanding of the management of benefits in practice, and second, to explore mechanisms that contribute to the realization of benefits. These research topics are explored through a combination of qualitative and quantitative studies: Three studies using the stepwise-deductive inductive method, based on data collected in semi-structured interviews, two focus group studies, and five statistical studies based on data collected in three surveys.

Main findings

This thesis contributes new knowledge by identifying:

• six challenges for practitioners using benefits management
• two underlying mechanisms that affect the realization of benefits, how time, cost,
  scope, benefit, and benefit/cost influences major project decisions
• that organizing work using continuous product development tends to promote a
  higher degree of benefits realization compared to using project organization
• that no difference is found in the realization of goals when comparing organizations
  using versus not using a goal hierarchy for managing goals.

In more detail, the six identified benefits management challenges are:

1. Identifying and describing the planned benefits of a solution 
2. Ensuring that project work is aligned with the planned benefits
3. Ensuring the reception and acceptance of the solution and the planned benefits
4. Handling organizational issues related to realizing benefits 
5. Maintaining an overview of whether other solutions or mechanisms can realize the benefits
6. Measuring and evaluating realized benefits.

Further, the two underlying mechanisms that affect the realization of benefits are – managing the changing understanding of benefits and project smells for early detection of problems with the realization of benefits. Managing the changing understanding of benefits concerns how practitioners’ understanding of benefits tends to change during project execution, how traditional frameworks for benefits management do not cater to this change, and how practitioners can manage this change in understanding of benefits. Project smells are a set of early indicators that practitioners can use to identify problems related to realizing the benefits of a project.

In further exploration of benefits management in practice, major project decisions were studied. When making major project decisions (including decisions on project continuation, disruption, and termination), practitioners were found to prioritize time, cost, and scope over benefit and benefit/cost. In addition, practitioners report that benefit and benefit/cost should have more influence on major project decisions.

When looking into the effects of ways of organizing work, it turns out that those using continuous product development outperform those using project organization in the realization of benefits. Interestingly, no differences were found in the realization of benefits when comparing those using versus not using a linear model (such as the waterfall model), agile, DevOps, or program organization.

Conclusion

This thesis concludes that the management of benefits is not straightforward in practice and that following available guidance (such as using a benefits management framework, agile, DevOps, or program management) is not sufficient to ensure the realization of benefits. In addition, this thesis provides evidence that benefit management includes a much larger portion of managing changes in the understanding of benefits, compared to what is suggested in benefits management frameworks available today. More work is needed to increase our understanding of the underlying mechanisms for the management of benefits, and updated guidance should be provided to practitioners to better manage the changing nature of the understanding of benefits.