Is delivering a project on time and within budget enough to guarantee its success? Stéphane Derouin, Partner at Scalian Consulting and Value Management expert, explains why value creation should become a central criterion in investment decisions and project management.
Faced with increasingly complex performance and transformation challenges, companies need to rethink how they assess the success of their initiatives. While controlling costs, deadlines and risks remains essential, it does not, on its own, guarantee that the expected benefits will be achieved.
Value Management: putting value creation at the heart of decision-making
Stéphane Derouin explores approaches that help organisations better connect their investments with the results actually achieved. Value-driven management encourages organisations to move beyond an approach focused solely on project execution and consider how projects actually contribute to strategic objectives. This approach, known as Value Management, involves identifying expected benefits, defining measurable success criteria and assessing the value created throughout the lifecycle of a project or product. This value is not limited to financial results. It can also take the form of improved service quality, reduced risks, a better customer experience or a lower environmental footprint. From this perspective, project management becomes a genuine decision-support tool, enabling organisations to prioritise initiatives and allocate resources to projects that contribute most effectively to their strategic ambitions.
Methods for connecting objectives with results
How can this approach be translated into concrete practices? In his opinion piece, Stéphane Derouin highlights two complementary approaches:
- Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
- Value Management Office (VMO).
OKRs help translate strategic ambitions into measurable objectives, while the VMO compares expected benefits with actual results to support decision-making and prioritisation. Complementing the Project Management Office (PMO), the VMO helps shift project governance towards an outcome-oriented approach, in which investment decisions can be reassessed based on the value actually delivered. This approach aligns with Scalian’s expertise in project and programme management, combining risk management, portfolio optimisation and methodologies adapted to complex industrial environments.
Human expertise and artificial intelligence supporting project management
The evolution of management practices also depends on teams’ ability to analyse results, challenge initial assumptions and make informed decisions. In this context, artificial intelligence opens up new opportunities for analysing deviations, exploring scenarios and preparing project and portfolio reviews. These developments also reflect Scalian’s work on AI-augmented PMO, particularly through planning automation, data enrichment and the simulation of different scenarios. However, as Stéphane Derouin emphasises, technology cannot replace human judgement. Data quality, the interpretation of results and the ability to make informed decisions remain essential to steering projects towards sustainable value creation.
