The Benefit Delivery Model circa 2007

So in a fit of nostalgia I was going through some work I created back in 2007 and one slide within a pack on   a formal Quality Gate Process stuck in my mind.  Whilst a lot of the world has moved away from the formalised and regimented QMS / Gate structures and approval boards with endless paperwork having a stranglehold on project delivery, the underlying principal still stands:

Benefit comes from Process Improvement, not from IT.

I realise this is stating the obvious to some, but for me it was worth just mentally re-visiting that statement.  We can build the most technically elegant and "bleeding-edge" platforms, the most wonderful UI's and the fastest responding architecture in the land, however unless it is improving something tangible for the business, there is no real point in investing in it.

Whilst my slide above was for an audience in a Government organisation who liked Prince2 and SSADM type processes, it still stands up just as well in the Agile world.  Every single user story can be considered to be its own little business case (if written correctly) with the benefits clearly stated, and the acceptance criteria clearly defined - Benefit really does come from Process Improvement, not from IT.