Managing Benefits™ Foundation and Practitioner Certificate Course

Don’t get left behind…

“Benefit management is concerned with informing investment decisions and optimization of benefits realization. It extends beyond passive reporting against forecast, to active approaches that engage stakeholders in an ongoing search for benefits.” Managing Benefits, 2012

Benefits Management is a concept that many organisations today struggle with.  Who should be accountable for benefits, including their realisation?  Often benefits are seen as the domain of project management.  It is not usually during the project that benefits are realised – generally it is after the project has been delivered, once the deliverables of that project have been embedded into the business and operational use that we hope to see benefits accruing.  This may be months (or even years) after the closure of the project.

These interactive course focus on helping individuals embed benefits management in their project environments beyond the project/programme life cycle to better understand, advocate, and maximise the value of investments.

These courses, based on the APMG guide Managing Benefits^™, focus on the management of benefits from change initiatives that are delivered via formalised project and programme management methods. Collectively these initiatives form the organisation’s change portfolio.

Foundation Course:

Course Objective

• To provide managers and practitioners from multiple disciplines, working in a wide variety of organisations, with generally applicable guidance encompassing benefits management principles, practices and techniques.
• To prepare participants for the APMG Managing Benefits™ Foundation Examination.

Practitioner Course:

Course Objective

• To prepare participants for the APMG Managing Benefits™ Practitioner Examination.

Foundation Course:

Course Content Summary

• Overview of Managing Benefits
• Principles of benefits management
• Benefits Management Cycle:
  • Identify and quantify
  • Value and appraise
  • Plan
  • Realize
  • Review
• Portfolio-based benefits management
  Implement, Sustain and Measure
• Foundation exam preparation
• Foundation Exam

Practitioner Course:

Course Content Summary

Review of the 9 syllabus areas including:

• Overview of Managing Benefits
• 7 Principles of benefits management
• Benefits Management Cycle:
  • Identify and Quantify
  • Value and appraise
  • Plan
  • Realise
  • Review
• Portfolio-based benefits management
• Implement and Sustain process in the adoption of benefits management

Foundation Course:

Successful completion of this course will enable participants to gain an understanding of the following:

• An overview of benefits management – what it is, the case for doing it, and some common misconceptions that can limit its effectiveness in practice.
• Descriptions of the seven principles upon which successful benefits management practices are built, and examples of how they can be/have been applied in practice.
• Details of the five practices in the Benefits Management Cycle relating to individual change initiatives, and examples of how they can be/have been applied in practice.
• Guidance on how to apply benefits management at a collective or portfolio level encompassing all projects and programmes included in the change portfolio
• Advice on how to get started in implementing effective benefits management practices and how to sustain progress.

Foundation Exam

The purpose of the Foundation qualification is to confirm that a candidate has sufficient knowledge and understanding of benefits management principles, practices and techniques to work effectively in a range of benefits management roles. The foundation exam is a 50 multiple choice question 40 minute minute examination.  The pass mark is 50% (25/50).

Practitioner Course:

Successful completion of this course will enable participants to gain an understanding of the following:

• Understanding of how to apply and tailor the Managing Benefits guidance in a scenario situation
• A successful Practitioner candidate should, with suitable support, be able to advise on the implementation of appropriate practices and techniques, and apply these practices and techniques in a live organisational context, but may not be sufficiently skilled to do this appropriately for all situations.  Their individual expertise, the complexity of the organisational context and the support provided will also influence the impact the Practitioner can achieve.

The purpose of the Practitioner qualification is to confirm whether the candidate has achieved sufficient understanding of how to apply and tailor the Managing Benefits guidance in a scenario situation.  The Practitioner examination uses objective test questions, which require you to choose a response to a question from a set of choices for which the correct answer is pre-determined.  The paper consists of 8 questions, sub-divided into parts.  The pass mark is 40/80 (50%).  The exam is a maximum of 2.5hours (150 minutes) duration.

Examinations are undertaken on the final day of the course for both the Foundation and Practitioner certifications.  APMG administers the Managing Benefits exams.