Impact Tracking

Purpose and yield

The project’s business case consists of the expenditure side and the revenue side. The follow-up of the expenditure is made using budget follow-up, for example S-curves. The revenues are evaluated using impact tracking. Impact tracking is done in order to:

• Ensure that the project creates the impacts described in the hierarchy of objectives or the impact case.
• Establish a system that gives early warning when the impacts are not developed as planned.
• Ensure that the benefits are realized as planned
• Provide a quantitative follow-up on all types of impacts.

When is the Impact Tracking used in the project?

• Impact Tracking should be started as early as possible, even before all deliverables are established.
• Early indicators such as employee response to training, testing of competencies and assessment of behavioral changes can often be detected relatively early.
• The business impacts can often only be measured when all deliverables are established.

Pitfalls and restrictions

• The prerequisite for an appropriate impact tracking is a well-defined hierarchy of objectives or an impact case.
• Follow-up must be made early enough to make it possible to correct and affect the impacts.
• The impacts can usually only be measured in the following order: Deliverables, competencies, behavioral change, immediate business impacts, impacts on medium-term and long-term.
• The impacts are often measured by different target groups, so it is necessary to have access to all these target groups.
• The results must be used by the management or the project, otherwise they make no sense.
• It is a good idea to highlight the results in the organization, for example using a bulletin board.
• Responsibility for the measurements must be organized and put into system. There must be a person responsible for the measurements.
• There must be consensus and acceptance of the measurement points, otherwise discussion may arise whether the results are significant or relevant.

Who participates?

• The measurements should be made by the operating personnel in the areas concerned.
• The organization of the measurements is done by the project.
• Project owner and management in the affected operating areas make decisions about any corrective activities.

Approach for the impact tracking

A well-defined hierarchy of objectives or an impact case is a prerequisite.

• Step 1: Measurement points and measurement methods are defined for the different impacts in the hierarchy of objectives or the impact case.
• Step 2: Measuring frequency and time is planned in cooperation with the operating organization.
• Step 3: The follow-up is organized and responsible persons are appointed in the project and the operational organization
• Step 4: The measurement results are documented, e.g. in template 1 or 2. Templates 1 and 2 can be presented as posters that are placed visibly in relevant places in the organization.
• Step 5: Meetings are held with project owner or steering committee at relevant times in relation to the follow-up plan.

Template 1

• The desired effects are described in the column on the left. First the behavioral impacts and below the business impacts. A behavioral impact could be: Finishes the case processing in one round.
• The next column describes the desired measurement e.g.: Calculated as a percentage of all cases.
• The third pillar indicates the baseline before the project was launched, for example: 30%
• In the fourth column, measures for this impact are recorded for example: 90% of all cases.
• In the following columns, the observations are recorded on different dates e.g.: 46% are cases are processed in one round on 14 May.

Template 2

• This template is used just like template 1. In this case, the impacts in the first column are just specified in advance.

The templates can be expanded with a column indicating who is responsible for the different impact measurements.