The End Is Not the Point. The Value Is.

We love to see the end of a project.

Go-live is one of the most important dates in any project. It is discussed in the business case, in the steering committee, in the corridor and in every update to the executive. Everyone wants to know when it will be done.

And the honest answer, very often, is a shrug. How long is a piece of string?

The question we keep asking

The question feels practical. Dates can be planned, communicated and reported against. A date gives everyone something to hold on to.

But the end is not the point.

The point is the value the project’s outcome will return to the business. A go-live date tells us when the work stops. It says nothing about whether the work was worth doing.

So the question needs to change. Not: how long is the piece of string? Instead:

What value will we see, and in which form?

How will we measure it?

When will we realise it?

These are harder questions. They cannot be answered with a date on a plan. That is exactly why they matter.

Two kinds of focus

The question we ask sets the focus of the whole project.

If the focus is to end as soon as possible, then our energy goes into racing to the end. Scope gets trimmed where it is easiest, not where it matters least. Testing is compressed. Decisions are judged by whether they protect the date. Updates report progress towards go-live, because that is what everyone is watching.

If the focus is to maximise value and ROI, then each decision and each update is measured against the original business case. A change request is asked a different question: does this add value, or only time? A delay is weighed against what it protects. Progress is reported in terms of the outcome, not just the milestone.

Both projects can be busy. Both can report green. Only one of them is steering towards the reason it was funded.

A familiar example

Consider two councils replacing their finance systems.

At the first, the steering committee opens every meeting with the same question: are we still on track for 1 July? The reports answer it. The project goes live on the date, and everyone is relieved. Six months later, the benefits written into the business case, such as a faster month-end close, fewer manual journals and managers seeing their own budget position, have not been checked by anyone. The spreadsheets are still there. The project team has been disbanded. Nobody asked whether the value arrived, because nobody had ever been asked to look for it.

At the second, the steering committee opens every meeting with a single page showing the benefits in the business case and where each one stands. Month-end close from fifteen days to seven. Manual journals halved. Budget visibility for managers each week. When the vendor proposes customising a report to replicate the old system, the committee asks which of those benefits it serves. When go-live comes under pressure, the committee asks what a delay would protect and what it would cost in value. The date still matters. It just is not the only thing that does.

Same system. Same budget. Different questions, and so a different project.

Keeping the business case honest

One caution. Measuring against the original business case does not mean treating it as fixed. Over two or three years, the organisation changes, and some of the assumptions underneath the case change with it.

The discipline is to keep returning to it: to ask whether the value is still there, whether it is still the right value, and whether it is still on its way. A business case that is read at approval and again at closure, and never in between, was not being used to steer. It was being used to get started.

Focus decides the rest

Sounds unreal, but true.

Our focus determines the questions we ask, the thoughts we breed and the actions we take. Ask about the end, and we get a project built to reach it. Ask about the value, and every conversation along the way starts to point there too.

The questions that remain

Here are some questions to ponder.

When your steering committee last met, how much of the conversation was about the date, and how much was about the value?

Could you name the benefits in your business case today, and say when you expect to see the first of them?

And if your project went live tomorrow, exactly on time, how would you know whether it had succeeded?