Ways Projects Produce Value
According to the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) 8th Edition, project managers are responsible for ensuring that their project delivers value. Completing projects within the triple constraints of time, scope, and cost isn’t enough. Let’s look at examples of how projects might produce value:
- Tangible financial returns are the most common shape that value takes for most projects. They are financial benefits that the organization gains from a project and can be measured directly. Examples include Return on Investment (ROI), payback period, and Return on Assets (ROA).
- Intangible value items are benefits you can’t always measure with a hard, specific number, such as improvements in customer satisfaction, community perception, or reputation as a high-quality provider. Assigning a number to this type of value is, essentially, guesswork. But this type of value can be crucial to a company’s success.
- Social Value, which PMI calls Value for People, represents an outcome that increases the value a project delivers for people. Examples include expanding access to a product or service to people in remote communities or to those who speak various languages. A service that displays wait-times for medical services is probably a sunk cost for the medical facility, but it makes things less stressful for patients. Expanded definitions like Social Value offer greater flexibility in justifying projects. Of course, they also increase expectations for the outcomes a project manager must track and manage.
- Value for the physical environment is a measurable value of a net benefit to the physical environment, such as reduction in waste, improvement in resource consumption, or decreases in environmental impact, such as net-zero energy policies.
- Increased operational efficiencies represent measurable value from strengthening operational efficiency and streamlining workflows within the organization. This type of value is often demonstrated through improvements in areas like communication or the deployment of new technologies to reduce complexity. Many of these directly or indirectly result in tangible financial returns. But they don’t have to in order to be considered valuable. For instance, outcomes that increase employee safety might increase costs, but deliver greater efficiencies because fewer skilled staff days are missed, and there is a more positive perception of the company’s care and concern for its employees.
Are you already focused on value delivery? Great, you are a valuable project manager! If you want to learn more about this focus on value, check out Cyndi Snyder Dionisio’s course, Introducing the PMBOK® Guide—8th Edition.
Coming Up
It’s official! I’ve started a complete rework of my popular Project Management Foundations course. It was the #4 most popular LinkedIn Learning course in 2025. And the improvements and enhancements we’ve planned might notch it higher in the rankings.
In this edition, I’m narrowing the focus to project managers’ most important responsibilities, key skills, and effective techniques. It will also emphasize the practical aspects of how everything helps you deliver successful projects in the real world. That will get you going quicker and make your efforts more effective. In addition to videos, the course will include text to provide background info, infographics for high-level perspectives, and AI role play to practice common PM situations. There will be two levels of challenges: easier ones for people newer to project management and others for project managers who want to move up. And the content will also be in line with PMBOK® 8th edition.
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