Harvesting practices ensure the expected benefits are reaped. Just like a systems development lifecycle, benefits must be managed from the cradle-to-grave too. However, there is a difference. The benefits cycle starts earlier - with strategy - and goes on later than the IT development life ­cycle, encompassing benefits reviews months and years after the IT system has been delivered.

These periodic benefits-focused post-implementation reviews are conducted by a harvesting steering group. The membership and mentality of this steering group is key. Whereas most enterprises implement some kind of review when an IT implementation phase of a project is complete, often the spirit of this meeting is simply a wrap-up, a way to achieve psychological closure. Attendance at these meetings is variable, depending on availability of staff that are usually focused on new projects by the time implementation and deployment is complete.

A harvesting steering committee is a very different animal. Gone is the cursory and collaborative review, replaced instead by a more adversarial process. Gone is the project manager as chair, replaced, as one CIO described, by "the Enforcer: The CFO that wanted to see his money".

Attendance is gingered up too. It includes all key stakeholder groups, including business sponsor, users, IS delivery team, change and program management team and IS operations. The focus is on the question of whether the business reaped the expected benefits. Not whether the IT bit of the puzzle completed on time.

In a practical sense, these harvesting steering committees can be evolved out of the more normal project governance groups. Rather than disband the project steering group once IS solutions are delivered and business change is complete, change this group into the harvesting steering group. Typically this group will include the business sponsor, key internal customers, CFO representation and IS development and operations staff.

The harvesting steering group for a project should stay alive until the business changes delivered during execution become part of business as usual. The group should meet periodically to look for deviation from the benefits plan, to advise the business and IS operations staff on remedial actions and to escalate serious issues to the executive committee. This group should also commission a benefits audit.

While the aim of harvesting reviews is to maximize benefit from the project, a harvesting audit should also be conducted for the purpose of learning - what worked and what didn't work in terms of generating value for the enterprise.

A lot of the learning that is key to improving both business and IS practices is available during this harvesting phase, when IS staff have traditionally had little or no involvement.

Evaluate and improve your benefits realization practices. From the CIO's perspective, IS involvement in driving benefits realization can have a triple pay-off.

Firstly, if the improvements are successful, business benefits delivered are higher.

Secondly IS credibility increases.

Finally, involvement in the harvesting phase extends the opportunity for the IS organization to learn and improve.

Andrew Rowsell-Jones is vice president and research director for Gartner's CIO Executive Programs