Benefits Review Plan

What is this?

A Benefits Review Plan is used to define how and when a measurement of the achievement of the project’s benefits, expected by the Senior User, can be made.  Some benefits may be realised during the project lifecycle, but more commonly project benefits are realised after the project has delivered everything and been closed.  The plan details what needs to be done for all project benefits, whenever they are realised.

The plan covers the activities to find out whether the expected benefits of the products have been realized and how the products have performed when in operational use. Each expected benefit has to be assessed for the level of its achievement and whether any additional time is needed to assess the residual benefits. Use of the project’s products may have brought unexpected side-effects, either beneficial or adverse. Time and effort have to be allowed to identify and analyse why these side effects were not foreseen.

If the project is part of a programme, the Benefits Review Plan may be contained within the programme’s benefits realization plan and executed at the programme level. Post-project, the Benefits Review Plan is maintained and executed by corporate or programme management. 

Why it’s useful?

This is a PREMIUM template as defined by the PRINCE2 Project Management methodology.

Whilst you can find this template in Appendix A of an official PRINCE2 manual, of course you may not have purchased a manual, or you may just prefer to have an electronic version of it.

How to use it?

This is a ‘vanilla’ template that accompanies the PRINCE2 methodology and is used as the basis for PRINCE2 exams. Whilst you can use it in its vanilla format we recommend that you think about tailoring it (as suggested by the method itself) bearing in mind the following:

• Industry / organizational specific terminology
• Size / complexity of project
• If the project is part of a programme
• Any existing templates in your organization

The Benefits Review Plan is created bythe Project Manager and presented to the Executive during the Initiating a Project process.  It is updated at each stage boundary, and used during the Closing a Project process to define any post-project benefits reviews that are required.  Once the project is closed the Benefit Review Plan is passed onto Corporate / Programme Management so that the post-project benefit reviews can be coducted.