Document Deconstruction: A Working Example

Having considered in our previous blog post the starting steps of the benefits realisation mapping process, this post will work through an example of each of those stages and see how we can get from a forest of paper to a clear map that enables us to distinguish the wood from the trees. Our example is focused upon a project to create learning material for benefits realisation.

Step 1 – Collect together all the available and relevant documentation. In this example, we have a strategy document entitled ‘Providing Realisor Education Material’, of which a pdf can be viewed here and a provisional plan for the process of creating a blog called the ‘Black Box of Benefits’ that can be found here.

Step 2 – Whilst this could be done using a collection of Post It’s, for the purposes of demonstration via the blog, we are going to add comments to the document using the Review function in Microsoft Word. Each comment that is added to the document would be a Post It.

Step 3 – Taking the ‘Providing Realisor Education Material’ document first, we can see that the opening section specifies the ‘Aims of Realisor Education’ – or the outcomes that we would like to achieve from the education process. 

Referring to Kevin’s recent blog post on ‘Finding Outcomes and Initiatives in Documents’ here at this point we do not know if these are separate outcomes, or if when we go through the rest of the documents that overlapping Post It notes will be created. So what we need to do at the point is to comment/create a Post It note of where these came from. Kevin’s post also considers the naming of Outcomes, using OutcomeJogger as a reference guide – these are not quite worded as Outcomes yet. Further reading of the document draws out what types of learning material is likely to be required – this is what we will do to achieve our Outcomes so we can note these as a set of Initiatives to be undertaken. Within the strategic objectives section, we note the key strategic objectives of this project - like within this document, these can often be found in diagrams within documents. The section covering ‘What needs to be done’ is more typical of what you may find in a strategy document – a mix of Initiatives and Outcomes that these connect to. This document has set out in a manner that is easier to deconstruct for the purposes of this demonstration but tend to be more typically phrased as per the example given in the ‘Finding Outcomes and Initiatives in Documents’ blog post.

In a similar fashion, we go through the ‘Black Box of Benefits’ document and use the comments to note anything that could be considered an Outcome, Objective and Initiative. As you can see across the two documents that we have deconstructed, we have some Outcomes, Objectives and Initiatives that are the same, both within the document and across the two documents. As discussed in the previous blog post, ‘Document Deconstruction’, this can provide key insights into the importance of the benefits – if you have the same thing noted down several times across the same or multiple documents, this indicates that it could be a key benefit.

Step 4 – Now it’s time to collect together all the information you have pulled from the documentation and sort it into groups, for example by what we call an ‘Initiative’ – where something is happening or being done and by ‘Benefit or Outcome’, which are the results of the changes – these can be both positive and negative. You may also find it helpful to further break down these groupings – during the recent construction of a benefit map, we found it useful to sort our Outcomes or Benefits into areas, for example pulling together those relating to technology, relating to marketing etc. We are also considering at this point any Initiatives/Outcomes/Objectives that have been duplicated across the documentation. 

Step 5 – The next stage is the creation of the benefits map – here we are using Realisor to do this. As discussed in Kevin’s Benefits Unmasked blog post ‘Terminology, what’s in a name?’, there are many different BRM methodologies – we are going to be using the Realisor default names of Initiative, Outcome and Objective (which can be changed within the tool to customise yours or your customers preferred modelling preference). 

Realisor has import template functionality so we are creating our list of Initiatives, Outcomes and Objectives in an MS Excel node import. We can add the title we want to give our nodes, e.g. ‘Increase Realisor Sales’, select the node type and in the description field we can enter the details of the document that this came from – ‘Providing Realisor Education Material, page.1’. The description field in Realisor is searchable within the ‘Search’ tab and so we can easily find any Outcomes that have originated from the ‘Providing Realisor Education Material’ document for example. For help with naming your Outcomes, we suggest downloading the free resource OutcomeJogger.

Once we have imported this list into Realisor to create the nodes on the map, we can start bringing them together onto a canvas and link them together, to see what Initiatives contribute to achieving the Outcomes, if there are initiatives that make no contribution at all and if there are Outcomes that have nothing contributing to them to enable them to be achieved. It may be worth revisiting the documentation at this point to see if any obvious links have been noted, i.e. ‘we are doing X to achieve Y’ and there is an element of using your own judgement to decide what would contribution links would exist. The pulling together of this map will be discussed in the next blog post.

Remember at this point you are only making a first draft ‘straw man’ map that you will use to take to the stakeholders for their input.

Document Deconstruction

A good place to begin would be with Plato, who once said that 'the beginning is the most important part of the work'. Indeed, as W. Clement Stone said, 'definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement' and the purpose of benefits realisation is to ensure that the project/program's objectives are met and the benefits achieved.

 The problem is knowing where to begin or how to start and this could not be more true of undertaking a benefits realisation process. There are several excellent books available on Benefits Realisation and Management, but within these, there is an inherent element of assumed knowledge. It is almost taken for granted that you will be able to deconstruct documentation to tease out the benefits and objectives, that you can identify a stakeholder at twenty paces and run a workshop more thoroughly and efficiently than Usain Bolt can run the 100m, that like Jeremy Paxman you know what questions to ask and how to get the information you require.

This has resulted in a knowledge gap, and for this starting knowledge to be missing or incomplete makes the entirety of the benefits realisation process difficult to begin or to have success with. Here, we are going to fill this gap and take you through how we begin the benefits realisation process. A working example of this process will be displayed in another blog post.

Step 1 – Collect together all the available and relevant documentation. This could be things such as strategy documents, overviews, vision statement, Microsoft Project plans etc. This list is not definitive and the type of documentation will vary from project to program. The information you are looking for is why change is occurring and what they hoped to achieve from this change.




Step 2 – Grab a cup of coffee, multi coloured packs of Post It’s, a pen and pencil and a copy of OutcomeJogger™ –it’s going to be a long night!

Step 3 – Use the Post It’s to note down anything that resembles a benefit, strategic benefit or initiative. (For help with identifying these, you can refer to the blog post on Benefits Identification which can be found here on Benefits Unmasked). You may find it useful to colour co-ordinate these by document, using pink Post It’s for the vision statement, purple for the MS Project plans etc. This is helpful when you wish to refer back to which document the benefit came from and can provide key insights into the importance of the benefits – if you have the same benefit noted down in 5 or 6 different coloured Post It’s, that indicates that it could be a key benefit.

Step 4 – Now it’s time to collect together all the information you have pulled from the documentation and start sorting it into groups, for example by what we call an ‘Initiative’ – where something is happening or being done and by ‘Benefit or Outcome’, which are the results of the changes – these can be both positive and negative. You may also find it helpful to further break down these groupings – during the recent construction of a benefit map, we found it useful to sort our Outcomes or Benefits into areas, for example pulling together those relating to technology, relating to marketing etc.

Step 5 – The next stage is the creation of the benefits map. You can use a modelling tool to do this such as MS Visio or in this instance, we are using Realisor to create our maps and hold information on initiatives and outcomes. Now that you have your Initiatives and Outcomes sorted and grouped, it is time to pull them together onto a canvas and link them together, to see what Initiatives contribute to achieving the Outcomes, if there are initiatives that make no contribution at all and if there are Outcomes that have nothing contributing to them to enable them to be achieved. It may be worth revisiting the documentation at this point to see if any obvious links have been noted, i.e. ‘we are doing X to achieve Y’ and there is an element of using your own judgement to decide what would contribute to what. Remember at this point you are only making a first draft ‘straw man’ map that you will use to take to the stakeholders for their input.