Managing the Realization of Business Benefits from IT Investments

If you read nothing else, read Managing the Realization of Business Benefits from IT Investments.  This brilliant paper by Professor Joe Peppard, Professor John Ward, & Professor Elizabeth Daniel gives a great introduction to Benefits Realization, especially to the concepts related to creating a Benefits Dependency Network.

Key Quotes:

No IT investment is ever just about technology. Drawing on over 10 years of research that has studied how organizations improve the return on the investment they make in IT, this paper presents an approach which enables managers to identify, plan for and manage the delivery of benefits. This approach implies new ways of working between IT professionals and business managers that complement the best practices in delivering IT solutions, but that engage business managers in a way that enables them to apply their collective knowledge to creating business value from IT enabled change.

IT has no inherent value...Benefits arise when IT enables people do things differently.

The benefits expected from any IT implementation are unlikely to emerge automatically. Any benefits sought must first be identified along with the changes in ways of working that will bring about and sustain each of the benefits. Ownership and responsibility for the realization of each benefit must then be assigned and how it will be realized needs to be planned by the benefit owner and those responsible for making the changes on which it depends. As our research has consistently found, through this type of benefits realization planning the likelihood of the benefits being achieved is greatly enhanced.