Who pays the bill and who pays the price for value capture

How many of the projects you delivered this year can you actually explain the real benefit of? I'll admit that, for me, the answer isn't always easy to produce. Most of the time I depend on a director or the functional manager who owns those numbers, and the PMO doesn't always have unrestricted access to that data. This is a challenge that bothers a lot of people who work with projects and portfolios. It feels like never truly having your effort recognized.

From delivery to value capture

Most of our routine in projects ends at closure: scope delivered, deadline met, product or service in operation. But the result that justified the investment almost always shows up later, sometimes months, sometimes years. We call that gap value capture: the time between a project's delivery and the real proof that the promised benefit happened.

That result tends to show up along a few value fronts. Revenue growth, when the project opens a new revenue stream or expands an existing one. Margin gain, when the same sales volume generates more profit. Cost reduction, direct and visible in the budget. And operational efficiency, measured in man-hours (HH) or FTE freed up for other work. There are others, but these are the most common.

Each of these fronts demands a different mindset from the project manager and the PMO. Delivering scope is one discipline. Tracking revenue, margin, cost and efficiency months after delivery is another, and few project teams are structured for it.

Who pays the bill and who pays the price?

Here's the central point of this piece. Many results can only be proven months or years after delivery, and a good share of the people who signed the Business Case are no longer in the same role, or even at the same company, by the time that proof would arrive.

Someone is left to deal with whatever remains, whether the result is good or bad, including the side effects nobody put in the original spreadsheet.

How this plays out day to day

The idea is born before the project

Projects are born in the realm of ideas, and that never changes. Someone sees a better future, does a quick mental calculation, and already convinces themselves of the return.

It's the same logic as someone thinking about opening a small business on a Sunday afternoon: buy at one price, sell at another, multiply by the expected volume, and land on a round number that seems obvious. The back-of-the-envelope math always checks out.

That same logic gets applied to bigger ventures, like a new business unit that today generates a fraction of what it promises to capture a few years down the road.

Authority decides, process formalizes

If the person with the idea has full authority and autonomy, execution begins right away, often without any analysis of impact or available capacity. If that person has influence, the demand jumps ahead of others already underway.

When a formal prioritization and project-selection process exists, the idea becomes a structured demand for budget and portfolio. That stage involves risk and return analysis, risk tolerance and launch timing, but that's not the focus of this piece. The message here is a different one.

The Business Case that (almost) nobody writes

Most companies, especially those with low project management maturity, never even get around to formalizing a Business Case before authorizing the investment. PMI itself points out that only one in three organizations reports high maturity in benefits realization for their projects. Without maturity on that front, it gets even harder for anyone, down the line, to take on the responsibility of confirming whether the promise was kept (PMI, Pulse of the Profession).

Execution, where most of us stop

This is the part most of us know well: plan, execute, deliver, close the project, and move on to the next demand. For a good share of project managers, the story ends here.

The difference lies exactly there. Between delivery and value capture there's a long gap, and there isn't always the patience to wait, or the visibility needed to track what comes next.

The posts you've already seen

That's where the LinkedIn posts come in, often not even from the project manager. Vague messages, with no concrete result, no captured value, no real measured impact, sometimes with inflated or biased numbers.

The excitement stays with the delivery, not with the return or the effects it actually brought. And these messages almost never mention the technical debt or the legacy maintenance left behind as an inheritance.

Who pays the bill and who pays the price, again

I come back to the question because it deserves repeating. Results proven months or years later don't earn a like or an immediate promotion. They don't bring immediate accountability or consequences either.

Whoever made the promise in the Business Case may no longer be there when the bill arrives. Someone stays to live with whatever's left, good or bad, including the side effects.

The takeaway

Next time you kick off a project, try answering these questions before you start:

Who will certify that the benefits were captured? Who will still be around to keep that promise? Who will have to live with it?

Maybe that person is you.

The observations in this piece reflect personal perceptions and don't represent any specific company.

If this topic interests you, I've already written about the challenges of managing projects in traditional companies here on the blog.

Leandro | PMP | Project and Portfolio Manager