@inproceedings {42770,
	title = {Benefit Considerations in Project Decisions},
	journal = {International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2022},
	year = {2022},
	month = {11/2022},
	pages = {217-234},
	publisher = {Springer, Cham},
	edition = {23},
	abstract = {Software project success is often characterized in terms of time, cost and scope {\textendash} despite that delivering benefit is the main purpose of a project. In this paper, we explore 1) to what degree benefit considerations influence major project decisions, 2) to what degree a specific set of benefits management challenge are handled and influence major project decisions and 3) if there is any realization (over time) that benefit considerations should receive greater attention. We investigate influence in projects with four types of problem severity: completed projects with only minor problems, completed projects with major problems, projects that were disrupted but completed, and projects that were terminated before completion. We asked 45 software professionals to what degree time, cost, scope, benefit and benefit/cost, as well as benefits management challenges, influence major  roject decisions. Our findings indicate that time, cost and scope have a significantly higher degree of influence on project decisions than benefit and benefit/cost. However, practitioners think that benefit and benefit/cost should have significantly more influence on decisions than cost. The benefits management challenges are found to have less influence in the more severe projects. We argue that giving benefits considerations a stronger voice in project decisions would be in line with the desire of practitioners and the prime objective of delivering benefit to stakeholders. We conclude that it is important to understand how to handle benefits management challenges at different stages of project life and that handling such challenges should be integrated with other prime drivers of project success.},
	keywords = {Benefit, Benefits management challenges, Cost, Scope, Software project severity, Time},
	isbn = {978-3-031-21388-5},
	doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21388-5_15},
	author = {Sinan Sigurd {Tanilkan} and Jo Erskine {Hannay}},
	editor = {Taibi, Davide and Kuhrmann, Marco and Mikkonen, Tommi and Kl{\"u}nder, Jil and Abrahamsson, Pekka}
}
@inproceedings {42484,
	title = {Perceived Challenges in Benefits Management - A Study of Public Sector Information Systems Engineering Projects},
	journal = {Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)},
	year = {2022},
	month = {06/2022},
	pages = {156-165},
	publisher = {IEEE Computer Society Digital Library},
	edition = {24},
	abstract = {The field of benefits management gives guidelines on how to plan and realize benefits\&nbsp; throughout the life-cycle of a system. However, realizing benefits from information systems projects has proven to be challenging in practice. In this paper, we investigate specific benefits management challenges as perceived by practitioners involved in information systems engineering projects. We conducted 22 interviews with respondents representing nine public sector projects, where challenges in managing benefits were elicited and identified. We elicited six specific benefits management challenges: A - Identifying and describing benefits, B - Alignment of work with planned benefits, C - Reception and acceptance of the planned benefits, D - Organizational issues, E - Alternative or competing solutions, F - Measuring and evaluating benefits. Overlaying these challenges with current normative models on benefits management, we find\&nbsp; that: 1. Normative models on benefits management lack sufficient guidance on operative work on how to create information systems fit for realizing benefits and how to introduce these solutions to ensure benefits realization, and 2. Normative models on benefits management do not explicitly leverage the\&nbsp; rapid project learning promoted by modern engineering methods. We conclude that more specific benefits management models should be elaborated, which are integrated into modern information systems engineering practices. This will enable best practices on the continuous adjustments of cost and scope according to evolving knowledge in projects to also be adapted to the management of benefits.},
	keywords = {Benefits management challenges, Benefits management models, Information systems engineering, Public sector},
	doi = {10.1109/CBI54897.2022.00024},
	author = {Sinan Sigurd {Tanilkan} and Jo Erskine {Hannay}}
}
