As currently conceptualized in many project communities of practice, the “benefits” construct refers to outcomes of the project which are valuable to some stakeholder(s). Stakeholders other than the customers may have benefits from a project, without receiving any deliverable, and perhaps long after these have been taken away by the customer. While these beneficial outcomes often depend on outputs of the project, i.e. the deliverables or product increments, they are seen as distinct and needing attention.

Clearly, then, benefits planning addresses dimensions of projects in addition to deliverables and customers. Such planning is often done or begun – at a high level – as part of a decision to launch a project. Once launched, the team doing the project would need to progressively elaborate benefits planning and integrate it into their planning processes.

This short (2′) video suggests one way of planning and managing “benefits” understood in this way.