Some customers prefer to call the value that they want to track Benefits, others call them Outcomes, we have other articles about the debate elsewhere. The important thing to know is that whether you want to track OKRs (Outcomes and Key Results) Benefits, Outcomes or Value Wovex will help you do that muchly more easily.

The time spent early on in business cases deciding what you mean by a Benefit and / or, Outcome is important to get shared clarity on what you want to measure and report on, whether you want to track Outcomes or only ultimate Benefits and to make the mapping and next stages much easier. Just know that with Wovex whatever theory you follow Wovex can support the approach that you need to make your definitions more consistent over time and the practice of managing and realising benefit easier.

As standard Wovex uses Benefits as the default terminology for Wovex. With Enterprise Advanced Data Management features you can switch between Benefits and Outcomes in the admin Settings screen.

And you can change the name of any related terminology to your preferred language on the wovex Platform in Settings > Customise > Database names if you are an administrator with setting permissions and Advanced Data Management. If you prefer to use the word Outcomes or Benefits, use what works and has traction for you.

Wovex products have been designed to be flexible to suit many different modelling styles and approaches.

You can annotate and design your maps with background shapes to break down or define different levels of benefit however you like, and with Clarity Plus advanced mapping features you can change the language to fit your terminology.

Outcome is a more generic term with no confusing associations with positive results or intent.

So Outcomes has proved to be a more useful term in certain situations.

For example some Benefits are perceived as beneficial by one person but as dis-benefits by another. For example ‘decreased staff numbers’ can be good or bad depending on your perspective. There is no value judgement in the word Outcome.

You may also wish to represent any known dis-benefits, negative effects or unintended outcomes of your work on a Map so that you can manage and reduce them. Benefits is sometimes read as having an implied intent which is not present in these situations.

Wovex also sometimes uses outcomes for these reasons.

We think that important thing is that you are aware and moving towards measuring and reporting what matters to show the delivery of benefits.

An outcome is the result of an activity or process, while a benefit is the advantage gained from that outcome. So on the whole experts prefer to only track the Benefits.

In our experience there are cases when tracking an outcome can be a useful step when there is no alternative, for example when the actual Benefit can not be measured for many years.

For a robust Benefit plan you may want a stage when you are tracking the early indicators of Benefits, such as Outcomes, with the intention of moving towards tracking benefits over time. We think that this is a pragmatic solution, as tracking something that is an indicator that the benefit will flow in time and the benefit is dependent on is better than nothing or purely tracking the delivery of projects themselves. As long as you are aware that that is what you are doing.

For example, if the benefit of your programme are social impacts over the next ten years, you may not see those results for a while. Soo you want to set up early the best ways to track this social change when it begins and capture any baselines for the state before the programme took effect.

However also finding a key performance indicator or Outcome that you can track for a few years that you believe demonstrates progress towards that social change is a good step and sometimes essential to ensuring alignment of projects to the strategy. For example, you may want to track jobs or apprenticeships created in the area by your programme as a way to show that social change is likely due to economic impact of the area of the new jobs.

Benefits management is the identification, definition, planning, tracking and realisation of benefits. Benefits realisation is the practice of ensuring that benefits are derived from outputs and outcomes.

Project success is the satisfaction of stakeholder needs and is measured by the success criteria agreed at the start of a project.

Definition from APM Body of Knowledge 7th edition​ (Association for Project Management)