CAPSTONE PROJECT BENEFITS AND VALUE

Identifying Benefits and Costs

By identifying and describing both costs and benefits, you can begin to compare each of them and weigh the potential net gain (benefits) or loss (costs) in value of a project.

Potential benefits of a doctoral capstone project can be related to the organization's priorities, such as its mission, goals, core values, and strategic plan objectives. They also could be related to aspects of the organization's operations, such as performance metrics, initiatives, processes, systems, and programs. They could also be related to quality measures, outcomes, utilization of resources, costs, reimbursement, and much more. Benefits can be tangible, such as revenue increases, cost savings, performance improvements, process improvements, and productivity gains; or they can be intangible, such as increased compliance, enhanced user experience, or increased staff collaboration. It’s possible to measure both types of benefits. A discussion of how anticipated measurable outcomes are determined is found below.

On the other hand, a doctoral capstone project's potential costs are the losses, including those related to money, time, resources, energy, and other factors in relation to, or associated with, the project. Potential costs could include team wages, inefficiencies, lost reimbursement or decreased cost savings, nonachievement of benchmarks, and others. Project costs estimation, as well as cost-benefit analysis, are sophisticated and complex processes that are not necessary at this point. What you need now is an awareness of costs that may be associated with a potential capstone project so you can make every effort to minimize them for your prospective practicum site (organization) and for yourself.

Project Features as Value Considerations

Another way to weigh costs and benefits to determine the value of a potential capstone project is to define project value considerations. This means to consider specific features of a project that facilitate or hinder its success. Those that may facilitate success are assigned a plus (+) to reflect a gain in value, and those that hinder success are assigned a minus (–) to reflect a reduction in value. Then, total the number of plus and minus signs. If you have more minus signs than plus signs, then something in your project must be refined. It’s better to make this determination in the early stages of considering a potential project, so you can either go back to the drawing board or refine an element in your potential project to meet the value considerations or criteria. The value considerations below are helpful because they’re not subjective; rather, they’re based on evidence of their net gain or loss in the value of a project.

Important value considerations include, but are not limited to, whether a potential doctoral capstone project meets the following requirements:

· Is aligned with an organization's priorities, such as its mission, goals, core values, and strategic plan (+).

· May require the organization to make substantial investments in time, staff, and other resources (–).

· Has SMART objectives (+).

· Will take longer than 12 weeks to achieve improvements in anticipated outcomes (–).

· Has defined, evidence-based, quantifiable, and measurable anticipated outcomes (+).

· Will be associated with indirect costs, such as a potential lack of or issues with accountability, teamwork, and leadership support (–).

· Delivers an evidence-based intervention that the organization can feasibly implement in 12 weeks (+).

· Includes approvable mentee activities to prepare for and support the implementation of the intervention, data collection, and outcomes analysis (+).

· Will require you to implement the intervention on behalf of the organization (–).

Defining Anticipated Measurable Outcomes

To substantiate a doctoral capstone project's potential to mitigate the negative effect of a challenge, it’s necessary to define anticipated measurable outcomes. As mentioned above, some of a project's potential benefits—improvements, gains, and advantages—may also serve as the anticipated outcomes. All projects should have measurable goals and anticipated outcomes. Anticipated measurable outcomes are the changes and improvements in conditions, metrics, behaviors, attitudes, or other outcomes that can be measured.

Review the Evidence

One way to define anticipated measurable outcomes is to use your evidence table to review sources and evidence you’ve already found in the literature. Remember that in previous weeks, you’ve used specific guiding questions for your searches that focused on the need to improve, improvement activities, the significance of improvement, interventions, outcomes, metrics, and benchmarks related to the organizational challenge. Reviewing the evidence that supports these aspects of improvement again will help you pinpoint measurable potential benefits and anticipated outcomes. You may also have found potential benefits and anticipated outcomes that are not measurable, but because a doctoral capstone project is an evidence-based improvement project, you must focus on those that are measurable and applicable to the improvement of a challenging situation faced by the organization in a specific setting, by the populations it serves, or both.

Formulate SMART Objectives

To create objectives to help define anticipated measurable outcomes, use the SMART objective format.

A SMART objective is:

· Specific.

. Provides the who and what of project activities.

. Uses only one action verb: improve. (If improving translates to reducing a metric, like readmissions rates, then use reduce in place of improve.)

· Measurable.

. Quantifies the amount of change expected.

. Provides a reference point from which a change can clearly be measured (metric).

· Achievable.

. Is attainable within a given time frame.

. Is feasible for the site to implement.

· Realistic/Relevant.

. Accurately reflects the action steps involved in implementing the intervention, within a given time frame.

. Directly relates to the improvement of the situation and success of the project.

· Time-Bound.

. Provides a time frame indicating when the objective will be measured.

Remember that your objectives must be comprehensive and must meet all the criteria of a SMART objective: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. To create a SMART objective, you need the P (the organization, its setting, or a population served) facing the challenge, your knowledge about doctoral capstone project requirements, and evidence from the literature of measurable potential benefits and anticipated measurable outcomes.