According to the University of Manchester, " Academics generally work within a university, combining research, teaching and administrative duties. Academics are the life-blood of a university, without whom the institution would not exist"[1]. Academics have a very systematic approach to research which provides lots of benefits when it comes to the introduction or evolution of new/existing concepts and/or processes. The way academics detail out each and every aspect of a subject under consideration is amazing. Exceptions are taken care of from an academic perspective and most of the corner cases are covered in the research subject.

Leadership has to be one of the key critical factors for the successful implementation of the Benefits Realization Plan (BRM) in any organization. Delegation of responsibilities as well as delegating the needed rights to carry on the successful implementation of the BRM needs flexibility; trust & faith as well as blessings of leadership on all levels. A benefits champion ideally should be a group of individuals from various departments who are more involved with the strategy and business side of the organization. A benefits steering group can be formed which should be directly responsible for not only the BRM but also effective execution of the same with the project management office (PMO) and/or portfolio management teams.

According to the standards of portfolio management by PMI, “A portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives”[1]. Any organization has very well defined business goals and strategic objectives. The organizations devise strategies and create a vision for the members of the organization as a guideline to follow in order to fulfill the business goals and strategic objectives defined by the organization. The strategies and vision lay the foundation for quantifying a portfolio and the entities within a portfolio.

I have been asking a lot of technocrats around in various verticals on whether they have been successfully tracking benefits realization in one or other format and making sure that they are constantly aligned and in sync with the organizational objectives, the most I get is glares and a few cheeky answers as to how they don’t get any “added/extra” benefit! Benefits realization management, defined in Benefits Realization Management: A practice guide, “BRM encompasses the standard methods and processes that an organization uses for identifying benefits, executing its benefits realization plans, and sustaining the realized benefits facilitated by portfolio, program, and project initiatives. BRM requires alignment with an organization’s strategy, a solid understanding of key principles, and techniques”[1].

One of the important aspects of Digitial Transformation is the introduction of cross-functional teams. A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal[1]. Cross-functional teams include people from various departments with different functional expertise working towards a common organizational goal. This teams also might have people from outside of the organization such as suppliers, key customers, etc.

The purpose of the cross-functional team is to facilitate innovation through creative collaboration leading to higher throughput and quick problem resolution. Another purpose of the cross-functional team is to break the silos that typically happen in big organizations and instead try to build bridges for communication. All the people in a cross-functional team have various levels of expertise so even if the posed problem is not solved, it can easily be taken to an “expert” by the team for doubt resolution and a probable way forward. All in all, cross-functional teams do lead to improved coordination across various functional areas.

According to PMBOK, “The project benefits management plan is the document that describes how and when the benefits of the project will be delivered, and describes the mechanisms that should be in place to measure those benefits. A project benefit is defined as an outcome of actions, behaviors, products, services, or results that provide value to the sponsoring organization as well as to the project’s intended beneficiaries”[1].

This document is a living document and according to me, its life-cycle starts way before any business plan is laid out. Information exists for this but maybe not in a centralized place. Many factors such as business execution environment changes (evolution, devolution or revolution) and/or strategy, management and economy changes are the ones which trigger activities that generate a probably viable business sustenance/execution plan.

Project management has been very much talked about and PMBOK is an excellent resource to get all the relevant information. I think people everywhere in public & private life do understand the value of project management. Simple tasks in everyday life (eg: go for an offsite meeting on Friday evening ;)) are looked upon as projects by parents. Everybody involved (husband, wife & children in this case) needs to be on the same page when it comes to execution.

Before I start writing on Digitization/Digitalization, maybe we should spend a little time in exploring the alternative “Analogization”! Now I have made up that word and probably the more appropriate word might be “Materialization”[1][2] but comparing the past/existing with the upcoming/future will give a perspective and provide a context for my thoughts.

As human beings, we have been generating information right from the start of our existence and materializing it as physical objects. These physical objects were hard to manage, cross-reference, study & derive from. With the new age technologies, we are now at a stage where we can convert all the physical form of materializing information into digital bits & bytes that can be read, stored, coded and decoded by computers (Digitization).