Why should your PRINCE2 project be supporting business value?
As a project manager, you have the business. Your organization is successful because of a unique combination of resources and situations, and you are one of the leading contributors to that success.
You should make inroads into the knowledge about what factors make your business what it is. In fact, those factors are what your leaders hold precious.
The touch that your business has, has brought with it a steady stream of customers. Customers who desire your offerings because they bear that touch. So it is but natural, that leadership among the business want the organization to retain that identity.
In the light of this logic, you as a project manager, need to see how your products would be imbibing the very touch that makes your business unique to the market.
In that manner, you would be supporting the notion of value to the business, by bringing what is valuable in the eyes of the business to life.
I'll tell you a story. There was an IT organization that served many software and equipment manufacturing companies. After years of association with these key accounts, the IT organization set about developing an email marketing software specifically with its clients in mind.
The editor part of the software incorporated the branding elements, for example, branding colours and fonts, of the client companies. Thus when using the email software, the people at these companies would be able to create promotional emails in no time.
The project manager, in this case, had face to face meetings with several business leaders who were not even involved in the project. The reason was simple: they wanted to truly understand what the business held dear.
It turned out to be the fact that after a decade long supplier-customer relationship with this clientele, the IT company had a good hang of how these organizations presented themselves to the market.
It was down to the efforts taken by the project manager in understanding what stood valuable to the business, that the email software was easily accepted and welcomed by the client companies.
What happens when your PRINCE2 project breathes business value
The first consequence would be a good one. You, as a project manager, would be building products that bear the core identity of the business. Not only would your products find acceptance within your project, but even stakeholders outside the project would be ready with their approval.
The next consequence is as good as the first one. You don't have to spend a load of time managing benefits. The business stakeholders should be able to identify value, when it is so much intrinsically built into your products.
Proposing value to the business becomes easier, because you have spent considerable time and energy understanding it first.
Conclusion
Understanding business value helps your products find a stable direction. Without that, your PRINCE2 project would only be a set of processes without any sustaining focus.
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