APM Portfolio Conference Speaker Spotlight: Managing benefits in a multi-faceted portfolio environment

Karina Singh, the Director of Transformation overseeing all the changes required to deliver the HM Land Registry Business Strategy 2017-22, and Annie Wareham the Head of Benefits Management for HM Land Registry who is responsible for developing and implementing the HMLR Benefits Management Framework talked to us about managing benefits in a portfolio environment.

Karina and Annie expressed that managing change well look likes different things to different people:

 “To investors, it’s about being convinced about the return on investment. To change professionals, it’s about being clear what they are delivering and what they are on the hook for. For customer and colleagues, it’s about understanding how the change makes life better for them.”

Managing change well means that clarity is “at the heart of these disparate needs”. Clear descriptions, quantification and tracking of the project benefits are vital according to Karina and Annie, so that they can “explain and prove to all involved that the investments we are making are achievable, on track and will make a positive difference”.

Karina added

“in our experience keeping track of benefits is tricky. They are slippery at best, but within an agile environment, benefits are really difficult to pin down. What looks really secure in concept often doesn’t look as promising in discovery, whether we are working in a tech or a non-tech enabled project. Realising and tracking becomes even more challenging when a lot of the benefits are ‘marginal gains’ to existing processes.”

Where they work in HM Land Registry, Annie and Karina have devised a practical way of working referencing the industry best practice five-stage benefits management model, “to get more confidence about quantifying and tracking our marginal benefits”. The design principles of accountability and transparency was their guide and “with solid and sustained senior stakeholder support via the governance, we have agreed on a language and set of tools that work for digital, programme delivery and operations colleagues to agree outputs and track delivery”.

If you want to learn more about this unique framework, various tools and real-life examples that “will demonstrate the work we did up front to agree the expected productivity gains, lock down the expectations and track those through the finance and HR systems” Annie and Karina will be at the APM Portfolio SIG conference on 23 May. Here they’ll give you a walk you through of how they have got people working together to deliver a change to the way they work.