Through Life Benefit Tracking

Choosing an option to report against

Data capture is always against a delivery plan. Before beginning to report the delivery plan dropdown in the ‘Programme Overview’ tab must have an option selected.

It is simple to check if an option has been chosen correctly as the reporting tabs within the Realise function-area of the application are hidden until an option has been selected to report against.

Making changes to the model during the process of reporting will be likely to change the expected values you are reporting against and this must be considered before making changes. However if changes need to be made to bring a programme back under control, you can continue reporting but you will be reporting against new expected values from that point onwards.

The Benefit Measures Screen

On the left hand side of the screen, there is a benefit measure summary, which lists all the benefit measures and shows the current status of the programme at a glance. Each of the benefit measures has a coloured status marker, which shows blue for no data collected or Red/Amber/Green depending upon the value against the expected value. Select the benefit measure in order to see its information in the data grid and on the graph.

There is a Notes box beneath the Benefit Measures which can be used to capture extra information about a value that is being added. Note that a value needs to be added for the notes box to become available for editing.

The Data Entry Grid allows the entry of User Expected and Actual Data values at set dates. User entered actual values always have a red-amber-green status, with the whole column changing colour. If the current date is past the date grid column date, the actual value will be populated with the expected value.

Row selection

Within the ribbon menu at the top of the screen there are ‘Realise Benefit View’ options. These allow rows to be added and removed from the graph and data grid. The values are ‘Show Baseline’, ‘Realisor Expected’, ‘User Expected’, ‘Critical Thresholds’ and ‘Moderate Thresholds’. Toggling these on and off will determine whether they are displayed or not. ‘Actual Value’ cannot be toggled on and off – this will always be displayed in the data grid and on the graph.

The Graph

This is a visual representation of the data grid, allowing clearly understanding of whether the data is within the bounds. Lines can be added and removed using the ‘Realise Benefit View’ options to improve the clarity of the model and to see comparisons.

Visualising Status

Each week that a measure has been entered for it coloured in the data grid (RAG) depending upon the value entered compared to the moderate and critical bounds. The quick status visualise on the top left benefit measures list changes colour depending upon the most recent report and in this case will change from red to green when a new report is added that is above the upper moderate bounds but below the upper critical bounds. If it is felt that the bounds are incorrect, these can be amended in the Model Data screen. Note that automatically populated actuals do not have these colours.

·         Blue state shows that no actual performance data has been entered.

·         Green state signifies that the actual performance data entered is within the Moderate Bounds.

·         Amber state signifies that the actual measures are between the Moderate Bounds and Critical Bounds, and therefore attention given to bring the benefits being realised back within the Moderate Bounds category. 

·         Red state signifies that it is outside the Critical Bounds and urgent action should be taken to either bring the benefits realisation back on track, or to re-evaluate the measure and expected values forecast. 

You are able to sort by importance and select whether to show the Benefit measures that are strategic, all benefit measures or all non strategic benefit measures through clicking on the drop down arrow next to benefit measures ‘Is strategic’ column and selecting the appropriate option.

Filtering Benefit Measures

You are able to sort the Benefit Measures by field heading by clicking on the heading to arrange the Benefit Measures.You are able to sort by importance and select whether to show the Benefit Measures that are strategic, all benefit measures or all non strategic Benefit Measures through clicking on the drop down arrow next to benefit measures ‘Is strategic’ column and selecting the appropriate option. Similarly, with the Importance field you are able to input a value to show only Benefit Measures that have an Importance above the value that you put in. For example, enter Show above 0 to show all Benefit Measures with an Importance of 1 or above.

Sorting the Measures

You can also sort the measures by the state by clicking the State Header.  This allows you to see all the different colours of the state grouped together to allow easy analysis. 

Tailoring the Values

Altering the expected values to better reflect reality is easily achieved by entering values into the ‘User Expected’ column. This will overwrite the expected values, both here and in the printed reports.

The Graph

 This is a visual representation of the data grid, allowing clearly understanding of whether the data is within the bounds. Lines can be added and removed using the ‘Realise Benefit View’ options to improve the clarity of the model and to see comparisons. There are many options available to change the view of the graph. Right click on the graph and select ‘Quick Help’ to obtain the help. You can also copy and paste the graph as an image or hover over a data point to see the value on the graph. In the chart you can place the mouse pointer over each value plotted on it and the value of the measure can be seen.  

The Y axis of the graph shows the values that the benefit measure is being recorded against and the x axis shows the time of the phases. The start/end of the phases is indicated on the graph by the darker vertical lines.

The thin red lines on the graph indicate the upper and lower critical bounds. The thin amber lines indicate the upper and lower moderate bounds. The purple line represents actual values entered into the date grid, with the points on the graph marking where values have been entered. The green line represents Expected values (Realisor and User), with the points on the graph marking where values have been entered. Hovering the mouse over the points on the graph will display the value at that point.

You are able to view multiple graphs simultaneously for comparative purposes. This is done by selecting two (or more) measures on the left using the control key to select the second (etc) then the graphs selected are shown with one on top of the other. 

What the Data Grid displays

When a Benefit Measure is selected the data grid for that measure appears to the right. The legend will correspond to the colour on the graph. The Expected values (as defined by user for the Performance levels for that Benefit Measure) and Moderate and Critical bounds (as defined by user in the Model Data screen) will be automatically inserted into the grid based on the information you have previously entered on Realisor. Each week that a measure has been entered for it coloured in the data grid (Red, Amber or Green) depending upon the value entered compared to the moderate and critical bounds.

-          Green state signifies that the actual performance data entered is within the Moderate Bounds.

-          Amber state signifies that the actual measures are between the Moderate Bounds and Critical Bounds, and therefore attention given to bring the benefits being realised back within the Moderate Bounds category.

        Red state signifies that it is outside the Critical Bounds and urgent action should be taken to either bring the benefits realisation back on track, or to re-evaluate the measure and expected values forecast.

Note that the columns with automatically populated 'Actual' data do not have these colours.

The Data Entry Grid allows the entry of User Expected and Actual Data values at set dates. User entered actual values always have a red-amber-green status, with the whole column changing colour.

If the current date is past the date grid column date, the actual value will be automatically populated with the expected value from the last value that the user has entered. Automatically populated values are shown in gray.

To enter data onto the grid simply click the cell you wish to add a value for and input the value. You are able to tab across the cells to enter data along the row. Any data that is entered will automatically generate on the graph below the grid.