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Question: Van Thy Ngo
I
am an auditor and we are about to go audit the project management of a
team put together in our company to implement an integrated business
system for the entire company. We are to look at how things are
going, how the project is managed, etc. The team is working with
IBM to implement the system and is in their early stages of
implementation. They just finished developing key performance
indicators for the project. I would appreciate any helpful tips
from people in the project management profession (as if you were the
auditor and you had to go in and review the project) - good/bad signs of
progress, what I should look for, etc.
Answer: Steve Evans
Having recently conducted a project audit myself I thought I should chip
in here. Firstly I'm a project manager and not an auditor, but I worked
with an auditor on the process.
We had a specific area to look at and questions to answer so we
concentrated on these. Are these clear to you for your audit? It would
be useful to find out why the audit is being done - as part of standard
practice or because of a particular issue that has arisen? We also
looked into the politics of why we were being asked to do the audit, the
personalities involved, the answer they might be looking for etc -
expecting the audit to simply confirm their own thoughts.
We looked at how well the PM standard was being followed, and to some
extent how good the standard itself was. But more importantly we looked
at how *effectively* it was being done.
We looked for standard PM stuff - plans, budgets, issues and risks
registers etc.
We looked at team issues - morale, communications etc.
We looked at the project board itself, how well it was doing its job
We looked at communications - did everyone know what was going on and
where it was all heading.
The tendency with audits is to look at what's bad rather than what's
good but it's important to strike a balance between the two. Avoid the
need to blame individuals, you are where you are and you need to look
forward. Blame the "process" but make recommendations on how to change
it.
We presented back our findings to the project board and it was
generally well received. But it's a delicate subject, to say the least!!
Answer:
Bill Duncan
First and foremost, separate your measurements into product and
project management.
"Titanic" was a great movie that was created as the result of a poorly
managed project. "Water World" was a not-so-great movie that was also
created as the result of a poorly managed project.
On the other hand, Iridium was a very well-managed project that produced
an unneeded product.
Success in one dimension does not ensure success in the other dimension,
but failure in one dimension may be inappropriately attributed to
failures in the other dimension.
Answer: John
Moreno
My input: a plan details what is expected as a final product. Throw
project in the mix and you have a final product to be produced
w/expected timeframes, parameters, dimensions, etc, you have structure.
In auditing, you are applying the science/art of measurements. For your
role, I would measure where the final product is relative to the project
plan and measure (audit) documented requirements against key
deliverables. Take into account setbacks and apply some variance of
course.
Answer: Steve
Grossman
You obviously come from a very disciplined PM shop (becoming a rare
breed in today's high pressure IT environment). Back in my Big 5
days, I was often called upon to step in to review/rescue potentially
troubled projects. If I found that the PM could even present
actual detailed metrics with any confidence, the project was typically
in pretty good shape.
In addition to concrete measures, a review of the deliverables and
methodology that define the project lifecycle can also be a good
indicator of the health of a project. An example of a sign of
project health would be a requirements document that provides a well
defined scoping section the leaves little to the imagination, plus
ongoing change orders. However, if the scoping section is vague,
or if there are no change orders, than the PM is probably not keeping
very close track of his budget. This would be a red flag to dig
deeper. This method should be applied to the appropriate
deliverables for each stage in the project lifecycle.
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