benefits realisation plan
Free benefits realisation plan template. Baseline, target, measurement method, benefit owner and post-closure review dates.
Delivering outputs on time and on budget is not success. Success is the benefit landing after the project team has gone. A benefits realisation plan is the artefact that survives closure and tells the organisation whether the investment paid back.
This template forces four things that vague benefit statements avoid: a measure, a baseline, a target and a date. "Improved efficiency" is not a benefit. "Average invoice processing time reduced from 9 days to 4 days, measured from the finance system, by 31 March" is. Each benefit carries an owner from the business, not from the project, because the project will not exist when the measurement falls due.
Benefits are classified as cash-releasing, non-cash-releasing or enabling, and mapped back to the business case so double counting is visible. Review points sit at closure, closure plus three months and closure plus twelve months. In Pocket PMO the plan becomes the live benefits register, and review dates generate reminders to the named benefit owner automatically.
What's inside
- •Benefit profile per benefit: measure, baseline, target, date
- •Classification: cash-releasing, non-cash-releasing, enabling
- •Named business benefit owner (not the project manager)
- •Measurement method and data source
- •Post-closure review schedule (closure, +3 months, +12 months)
- •Dis-benefits section, because honest plans record them
When to use it
- •Business case approval, benefits stated up front
- •Stage gates, confirming benefits are still achievable
- •Project closure, handing benefits to the business owner
- •Post-implementation review, 3 and 12 months after closure
Template structure
Every section below appears in the downloadable PDF as a ready-to-fill table.
Benefit profile
Measurement
Ownership
Review schedule
Dis-benefits
Use it live in Pocket PMO
The PDF is fine. The live version is better: auto-fill from your project, full audit trail on every change, AI Project Team drafts the tricky sections, and steering committees see one canonical version, not a stale spreadsheet copy.