Learning Outcomes
After studying this article, you will be able to distinguish types of project compliance requirements, explain how compliance is managed and monitored, and describe the process for identifying, measuring, and tracking project benefits and value. You will know how to set up a benefits management plan, assign ownership for ongoing value realization, and respond to changing business environments, supporting success in PMP exam questions.
PMP Syllabus
For PMP, you are required to understand compliance and value management across the project lifecycle. This article focuses your revision on:
- Planning for and managing project compliance, including regulatory, organizational, and contractual requirements
- Documenting and classifying compliance obligations and risks
- Establishing a benefits management plan capturing benefit targets, owners, and measurement methods
- Implementing systems to track, report, and sustain project benefits and value over time
- Assigning benefit ownership and clarifying roles for post-project value realization
- Adjusting compliance and benefit tracking in response to internal or external business changes
Test Your Knowledge
Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, remember to look more closely at that area during your revision.
- What are the three main categories of project compliance requirements a project manager must address?
- Which document records benefit targets, measurement procedures, and accountability for value realization?
- Who is typically made responsible for maintaining benefit tracking and reporting after project closure?
- When a new law affects your in-progress project, what steps should a project manager take to ensure both compliance and benefit realization?
Introduction
Projects must both comply with applicable rules and deliver the benefits and value that justify their existence. Compliance management ensures all relevant legal, regulatory, policy, and contractual requirements are met throughout the project. Value management focuses on achieving, tracking, and sustaining project benefits, not just at delivery but through post-project benefit realization.
Compliance risks change, especially when new regulations or organizational rules emerge. Likewise, the value a project delivers may depend on factors that change during or after execution. Project managers are expected to plan for both ongoing compliance and sustained value delivery by establishing responsibilities, clear measurement methods, and structured reporting.
Key Term: Compliance The continuing process of ensuring all project work meets applicable laws, regulations, standards, internal policies, and contractual obligations throughout the lifecycle.
Compliance Categories and Documentation
Project compliance requirements fall into three principal groups:
- Regulatory/Legal (External): National or local laws, regulations on health, safety, environment, privacy, or sector-specific requirements.
- Organizational/Internal: Corporate policies, PMO standards, internal procedures, security protocols, and quality controls.
- Contractual: Commitments made in contracts with clients, suppliers, or partners, such as deliverable standards, deadlines, or service levels.
All compliance obligations should be identified, classified, and documented as early as possible—usually in a compliance register or risk register. Regular review of compliance needs ensures new or revised requirements are integrated promptly.
Key Term: Benefits Management Plan A document describing how, when, and by whom planned project benefits will be created, measured, tracked, reported, and owned over time.
Key Term: Benefit Owner The person or group designated to be responsible for realizing, measuring, and reporting progress toward specific benefits, including after project handover.
Key Term: Value Delivery The systematic process of creating, measuring, sustaining, and communicating the tangible and intangible value a project brings, beginning during the project and continuing as stated in the benefits management plan.
Planning for Compliance and Value
Effective project managers take a structured approach to ensure compliance and ongoing value delivery:
- Identify all compliance requirements—through legal, regulatory, contract, and organizational review.
- Classify and record them by type (external, internal, contractual).
- Assess compliance risks—record in the risk register, plan responses for potential breaches.
- Integrate compliance into project plans—schedule audits, assign responsibility for controls and responses, define escalation paths for violations.
- Set up a benefits management plan—define benefit targets, how each will be measured, who is responsible (benefit owner), and how/when reporting will occur.
- Track, report, and sustain value—maintain measurement and reporting systems not just until delivery, but for the duration specified in the benefits plan.
Key Term: Benefit Realization The actual achievement and confirmation of benefits that were planned and measured according to the benefits management plan, as tracked post-delivery.
Key Term: Business Value The net positive contribution a project makes to the organization or its stakeholders, assessed relative to costs, effort, risks, and external or internal objectives.
Managing Compliance and Value Throughout the Project
Compliance and value management are continuous processes:
- Compliance controls should be baked into work processes, contracts, schedules, and procurement plans.
- Risks associated with non-compliance must be regularly reviewed and, when appropriate, escalated and documented.
- Changes in law, contract, or company policy must trigger an immediate compliance review and, if needed, project changes.
- The benefits management plan should clarify how benefits measurement and reporting continues after project closure, ensuring accountability does not disappear when the team disbands.
- Value realization is reported to stakeholders based on agreed methods and intervals until benefit targets are achieved or the benefits management plan expires.
Key Term: Benefit Measurement System Procedures and tools, as defined in the benefits management plan, for collecting, tracking, and reporting benefit achievement on a planned basis.
Monitoring and Sustaining Benefits Post-Project
Assignment of benefit owners is essential—these individuals, often outside the project team, must regularly report actual results against benefit targets after project closure. Projects do not always maintain benefit realization by default; it is the benefit owner's duty, as per the plan, to ensure value delivery is sustained, measured, and reported until completion of benefit realization activities.
Compliance and benefit reports should be included in standard project reporting and continued per the plan after handover. If a major external or internal change occurs (e.g., new regulation or business strategy shift), the benefits plan, compliance register, and reporting systems should be updated, and all owners informed.
Worked Example 1.1
A cloud migration project must comply with a new cybersecurity law introduced six months after kickoff. The sponsor expects the project to achieve a 20% reduction in IT support costs as a key benefit.
Answer:
The project manager identifies the new law, classifies it as an external compliance need, and updates the compliance and risk registers. Controls and audits are planned. The benefits management plan must now adjust tracking and measurement to reflect any process or cost impacts of the law, and benefit owner reporting must include compliance performance as a regular item.
Worked Example 1.2
A government program for digitizing legal records anticipates $1M per year in reduced physical storage costs. The benefits management plan assigns the archive manager as benefit owner. Three months into operations, storage costs have declined only slightly.
Answer:
The benefit owner reviews the measurement system, verifies the accuracy of data, and investigates causes for the gap. Interventions (e.g., staff retraining, process revisions) are implemented. Results are reported as required by the plan, and ongoing adjustments are made to ensure benefits are realized.
Worked Example 1.3
Midway through a procurement transformation project, a contract revision imposes stricter service levels and KPIs. The original benefits plan does not address these KPIs.
Answer:
The project manager amends compliance documentation, updates the benefits plan with new targets and reporting periods, assigns responsibility to a benefit owner, and notifies all relevant stakeholders. Compliance and benefit measurement and reporting requirements are communicated to all parties, ensuring continued alignment.
Exam Warning
PMP exam questions frequently test what the project manager does when sudden compliance changes or benefit reporting challenges arise. Never assume original requirements remain unchanged—always check if an update is needed, and describe clear actions to update compliance controls, risk records, benefits tracking, or owner assignments.
Key Point Checklist
This article has covered the following key knowledge points:
- Projects must continuously monitor and document external, internal, and contractual compliance requirements from start to finish
- Compliance controls, milestones, and escalation processes must be included in project schedules, risk plans, and reporting structures
- Benefits management plans define benefit targets, measurement criteria and tools, stakeholders’ responsibilities, and tracking/reporting systems
- Benefits measurement systems and owners must be defined to ensure accountability for realizing value after project completion
- Value delivery and benefit realization continue beyond project handover, tracked and reported according to the benefits plan
- Project managers are responsible for updating compliance and benefit tracking systems as new rules or business context changes arise
Key Terms and Concepts
- Compliance
- Benefits Management Plan
- Benefit Owner
- Value Delivery
- Benefit Realization
- Business Value
- Benefit Measurement System
