Benefit Management in Defence Investment Projects

The defence sector, as other sectors, experience challenges both with measuring and with achieving effect from investments. Benefit management is an essential tool to achieve effect from investments. This has been well documented in empirical studies. However, there has been limited research on benefit management within the defence sector. An important part of benefit management in the early phase of a project is defining goals. This study considers how goals for defence projects should be defined, with focus on the early phase of a project. The research questions are thus: 1) How is effect described in the early phase of defence projects? 2) How should the defence sector define appropriate effect goals? To answer the first research question, we have analysed goals in a selection of concept studies in the defence sector. This has given us an overview of how identification and planning is done in the early phase of defence projects. The second research question was answered by comparing our findings to best practice for SMART goals and considering how the defence sector can defined suitable effect goals. We find that the effect goals are not formulated as technical deliveries. This shows that the sector differentiates between effects and results, which is good. The sector is less effective, however, at setting clear levels of ambitions. Phrases such as ‘increased’, ‘reduce’ and ‘improved ability’ are common in the projects we have evaluated. Such intangible ambitions make it harder to verify that the goal is achieved and connect the results to the investment. Our analysis shows that the effect goals achieve medium score on the SMART scale and that there are significant variations between the projects and the quality of goals within the same projects. This shows that there is still potential to improve and create a unified understanding of how project goals are defined. Our analysis concludes that overall, the goals are sufficiently defined for the early phase of a project but are less suited when the same goals are used through the later project phases. Building on these results, we have developed specific guidelines based on the SMART framework to help develop suitable effect goals. In addition, we have three recommendations for developing guidelines and templates for better benefit management: 1. Making clear guidelines and requirements for effect goals – to ensure a unified understanding and high quality. 2. Requiring that the effect goals are updated – to make sure that the goals are revised if they are no longer relevant. 3. Making guidelines to follow up effect goals – to measure and govern investments based on effect.