Project management doesn’t stop at handover

Only 42 per cent of respondents in the Mannaz project management survey evaluate benefits realisation using metrics. One-third do so against a baseline or target, while a further 9 per cent measure without a clear basis for comparison.

This means many do not take a data-driven approach to documenting whether the project has actually delivered the desired impact. Instead, evaluation often relies on assessments, formal reviews, or the assumption that benefits have been achieved. This is problematic because perceived success and documented value are not necessarily the same thing.

Without concrete measurements, it remains unclear whether the project has actually delivered the desired impact. For project managers, this is not just about reporting, but about learning, legitimacy and linking deliverables to the organisation’s objectives.

The explanation is not hard to spot. In many organisations, projects are still assessed against the traditional parameters: time, budget and scope. This makes perfect sense, because if a project is delayed, too expensive or fails to deliver what was agreed, it will naturally be a cause for concern. But this logic can obscure the most important question: did the project actually create the value we had hoped for?

Research points in the same direction. Studies of Danish organisations show that management often prioritises completion over following up on benefits, and that a lack of follow-up can mean that otherwise potential benefits are never realised.

At the same time, recent project research suggests that project success today must be understood more broadly – not just as delivery, but also as business impact, timing, stakeholder experience and sustainable value creation.

For project managers, this means that benefits realisation can rarely be handled as a final exercise. Benefits often only materialise once the organisation changes its behaviour, work processes or priorities following implementation. It is therefore crucial to agree who owns the benefits after the project’s completion, which indicators need to be monitored, and when this monitoring should take place. Otherwise, the value can easily be lost in the transition from project to operations.

The key point is clear: if benefits are to matter, they must be made measurable, visible and jointly owned.

As a project manager, you can start by ensuring that:

1. The benefits are defined early on and clearly
2. Ownership of the benefits is clarified before the project begins
3. An agreement has been reached on how the benefits are to be measured.

This strengthens both the project’s credibility and the organisation’s ability to learn.

Perhaps this is precisely where the next level of project maturity begins: not when the project is delivered, but when you can document the value it has actually created.

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