TL;DR
Govern the end of the lifecycle with a benefits owner, baseline, and realization gate.
What the paper develops
Transformation governance often becomes weakest after delivery, exactly when expected value should become measurable. This paper explains how benefits lose ownership between approval, implementation, adoption, and steady-state operations. It proposes a practical realization discipline built around a named benefits owner, a credible baseline, leading and lagging evidence, and a gate that can change the intervention when the promised operating result does not appear.
The operating move
Keep a named benefits owner, an agreed baseline, and a realization review after delivery. A project is not complete when the output ships; it is complete when the expected operating change can be shown.
Inside the white paper
- Why delivery completion and value realization are different governance events
- Baselines, benefit owners, adoption evidence, and post-launch measurement
- A realization gate that can sustain, redirect, narrow, or stop investment
Sources and notes
- Project Management Institute, "Benefits Realization Management: A Practice Guide." pmi.org
- Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, "How Big Things Get Done," Crown Currency, February 7, 2023. penguinrandomhouse.com
- Johannes-Tobias Lorenz, Joshan Cherian Abraham, Robert Levin, and Douglas Ziman, "From promise to impact: How companies can measure—and realize—the full value of AI," McKinsey & Company, April 24, 2026. mckinsey.com