BCS Benefits Management and Business Acceptance

This classroom-based course reviews the related topics of business acceptance – making sure that a delivered information system meets its requirements – and benefits management – ensuring that the business benefits of a project are achieved.

Rationale for benefits management and business acceptance

• Lifecycle for business change
• The role and importance of benefits management
• The role and importance of business acceptance

Drivers for business change

• The business change lifecycle
• Internal and external drivers
• CSFs and KPIs
• Value propositions and the value chain
• Options for business change

The business case

• Structure and content of the business case
• Categories of business benefit
• Measuring benefits
• Quantifying benefits

Making the financial case

• Identifying and quantifying costs
• Investment Appraisal
• Payback
• Discounted cash flow/Net present value
• Internal rate of return

Planning for benefits management

• Benefit owners
• The benefits plan
• Benefit profiles
• The benefits dependency framework

User acceptance testing – testing for business acceptance

• Business acceptance in the ‘V’ model
• Principles and vocabulary of testing
• Testing roles and responsibilities
• The test process
• Functional and non-functional testing
• Test documentation

Test design techniques

• Activity diagrams
• Decision tables
• Decision trees
• State machine diagrams

Test planning, monitoring and control

• Progress monitoring and control
• Incident management
• Confirmation testing

Benefits management reviews

• Gateways – scheduled and unscheduled reviews
• Assessing the impact of change

Implementing business changes

• Impact on people and evolving attitudes to change
• Planning the implementation
• Implementation strategies
• Training/learning approaches
• Lewin’s model of change

Delivering business benefits

• Embedding business changes
• Lifecycle for benefits management
• Project and benefits reviews
• Disaggregating benefits
• Fragmentation of benefits
• Identifying and evaluating further benefits