Fundamentals of Benefits Assurance

ByRoger Elvin

“Making sense of the problems of e-change”


The e-change Training Limited approach to the management of e-change projects was rooted in our belief system about the nature of e-change, which surfaced slowly as we reflected on our experiences and the supporting published evidence.

At this point we should declare our position on academic IS research. Even during our brief foray into academia at the Cranfield School of Management, we preferred to work with practitioners than write academic papers. Our work was rooted in our experience rather than academic research but that is not to say that we were not been influenced by others’ thinking. We do not make any claims for completeness in our list of references. Our only criteria for good knowledge was: did it make sense to us? and did it help us interpret and explain our experience?


During our courses we put together a toolkit of practical tools and techniques that had served us well. It took us some time to get to the core set of beliefs on which our methods are based as we found it increasingly necessary to unpick the conventional received wisdom of how to manage IS/IT projects.

Fundamental to our approach is that the management of e-change is ‘purposeful activity’
(in the sense of Checkland (see, for example, Learning for Action, P. Checkland and J. S. Poulter, Wiley & Sons (2006)).

In our view, an e-change project is an organisational vehicle to deliver a new – and improved – state of an organisation in response to a perceived problematical situation. ‘Improved’ in this context is taken to mean that the new state is perceived by its stakeholders to have added value. The e-change project arises as the result of accommodations reached during the initial investigations of the problem situation resulting in a decision to effect planned change.

Our approach to the nature of e-change projects – and consequently how to manage them – has at its core a ‘weltanschauung’ consisting of the following elements:

  • Organisations are open, dynamic systems operating purposefully within a wider, social, economic and political context.
  • The source of value that the organisation contributes to its internal and external stakeholders is the work carried out by organisational actors.
  • Organisational value can be increased by re-configuring organisational activity. This can be evolutionary (by day-to-day adaptation to its environment) or deliberate (by goal-oriented action-to-change).
  • The value generated will be perceived differently by various stakeholders.
  • An e-change project (in this perspective) is a deliberate and purposeful investment of staff time and cash to respond to an agreed problematical situation. It is a temporary (and evolving) organisation set up to intervene in the current dynamic state of the organisation to bring about a socially constructed future state that is largely pre-determined.
  • A belief in causality. An e-change project can deliver planned change, i.e. interventions can be consciously designed and carried out such that the relationship between actions-to-change and the re-configured state that they are intended to bring about can be: a) predicted and b) controlled, both within an acceptable range of probability.
  • Project management is contingent (i.e. no ‘one size fits all’).

An hypothesised model of an e-change project was synthesised from four influences:

  • Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as an initial learning system (see, for example, Learning for Action, P. Checkland and J. S. Poulter, Wiley & Sons (2006)).
  • de Caluwe and Vermaak’s model planned change (Learning to Change, L. De Caluwe and H. Vermaak, Sage Publications (2003)).
  • Stacey’s classification of change situations (Dynamic Strategic Management for the 1990s, R. D. Stacey, Kogan Page (1990)).
  • Our Benefits Assurance model.

At the very outset, consensus about the nature of the problem situation and hence the purpose of the project may not exist. The project model therefore needs to allow for this consensus to emerge. It is necessary that the consensus does emerge for the problem situation to be manageable through a project to deliver planned change.


To be goal-oriented, key stakeholders need to achieve consensus about:

  • the underlying ‘problem situation’;
  • the potential benefit to the organisation from taking action;
  • the outcome to be achieved;
  • the process of change by which the outcome will be reached;
  • the feasibility of achieving the outcome;
  • the desirability of the outcome (considering the cost of the process of change).

Together these form the ‘Intent’ of some ‘planned activity’. Satisfying this intent will require taking action to deliver an agreed outcome, which may be the one originally agreed upon or, more likely, one that the key stakeholders come to accept as the project unfolds.

Once the intent has been agreed, the planned activity can be managed as a ‘contained’ project in the Stacey classification (see reference above).

A major issue with this perspective is one of boundary: is the ‘project’ the planned activity or the whole of the initiative from ‘problem situation’ to ‘new improved state’? In at least one case study (see reference below), getting from ‘problem situation’ to agreed ‘intent’ took as long as completing the ‘planned activity’.

The ‘intent’ is far less well defined than traditional project objectives, and includes the outcome and process which may vary throughout the planned activity. Evolution of the intent as the planned activity unfolds is to be expected and managed accordingly.

Furthermore, ‘project closure’ in this model is more subjective. Consider how ‘project closure’ is to be defined: as the intent is less well-defined and the outcome is systemic in nature, what criteria can the project use to define completion? Possibilities that might be used are:

  • all planned and agreed actions to deliver the outcome have been carried out; or
  • certain measurable characteristics (e.g. performance measures) of the outcome have been achieved; or
  • agreed stakeholder benefits have been delivered; or
  • a measurable impact on organisational key performance indicators can be observed or inferred; or
  • a negotiated agreement amongst key stakeholders that a satisfactory ‘state of affairs’ exists has been achieved.

The model is further described and tested against a case study in our contribution to a paper published in the International Journal of Project Management, which can be found in our PUBLICATIONS website.

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