Mastering Value Delivery: Integrating Benefits Realization and Risk Optimization to Generate Value

The value delivery system (VDS) is a central element of PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) – Seventh Edition and of Disciplined Agile® (DA™) that emphasizes the need to increase value realization through value streams. The whole of Chapter 7 in PMI’s The Standard for Portfolio Management – Fourth Edition is dedicated to portfolio value management, and The Standard for Program Management – Fourth Edition states that one of the objectives of a program is to generate or preserve organizational or business value. In addition, PMI’s Benefits Realization Management: A Practice Guide states that project and program outputs result in outcomes, which yield benefits and, ultimately, organizational value. Although value is a central element to projects, programs, and portfolios, few organizations know how to deliver value consistently, especially in today’s VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) context where creativity and innovation are essential. 

This training aims to reveal methods to set a value index and use it to prioritize business initiatives, not only on their alignment to objectives, but also on their achievability or overall risk. Sponsors and portfolio, program, and project managers will be able to draw practical methods to define, measure, and deliver value to the business through projects, programs, and portfolios. Traditionally, value was considered as a ratio between quality and cost, and more recently, between benefits and resources used to achieve them. The value ratio is the basis for many analysis techniques such as the ROI (return on investment) or project management’s scope-quality/time-cost. We will examine value as a ratio between the alignment with stakeholders’ expected benefits and the achievability of the proposed solutions, which will allow us to calculate the value index. We will consider benefits realization management (alignment) as one aspect of the value index and risk optimization (achievability) as the other aspect of that ratio.