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Question: Dave Greenwood
In
the organization I work for (an IT shop within a financial services company)
it has for a few years now been standard practice to carry out regular
assurance reviews on projects.
What
I'm looking for are some external views on the value or otherwise of this
process. Is it common enough to be considered best practice? Does anyone
have experience that shows it to be beneficial, or harmful?
To
clarify what I mean by "project assurance"
- It
is a structured review of a project by a full-time assessor (former PM
practitioner) and one or two co-opted currently practicing PMs
- It
looks at project organization, sponsorship, plans, risks, issues, change,
dependencies, resourcing, quality
- It
is not a QA of project deliverables, it is concerned with current status,
outlook, and the way that things are being managed
- It
provides line management with an independent view of the project status
and makes recommendations for change if appropriate.
Answer: Donna
Fitzgerald
We do
a similar process in Oracle only we call it project health checks. I've been
teaching seminars internally to increase knowledge and compliance with this
practice.
I
think it is a best practice with the usual caveats. The person conducting
the review has to know what the heck they're doing. Compliance for forms
sake gets you no where. We have the added wrinkle of doing this on a
project where the client is paying the bill. Health checks under those
circumstances need to be just as rigorous in practice but a little more
political in output then an internal IT review.
Answer:
Dave Jaques
First, let me start off by relating what we are doing. We have monthly
Program Management Steering Committee meetings. This meeting is held with
all of Operations Staff and the Business Unit Managers and Program
Management in attendance. Mainly this is the forum where all phase exits are
performed and any issues/concerns/risks are discussed. The PM's bring their
launch books with all of the supporting evidence (read forms, memos, etc.)
that backs up the fact that the program in question has completed the phase.
Then
right after this meeting, there is another meeting to review, from the
30,000 feet level, all of the active committed programs as well as a review
of some programs that have not been committed as booked business. The same
audience from the prior meeting plus Plant managers and the Plant Program
Managers are in attendance. Basically all programs are reviewed in general
terms; is it on schedule, on budget, any customer visible issues, any major
risks, etc. Some major issues/concerns will be discussed here as well.
After
reviewing all of this, how does this compare with what you refer to as
health checks, Donna? Or your assurance reviews Dave? I am sorry but it
wasn't very obvious to me.
Answer: Dave Greenwood
We
have management review meetings similar to those you describe. Our Project
Assurance reviews are different from and complementary to them.
PA
reviews are less frequent but more detailed. Each review looks at just one
project and may take two or three hours. It will typically involve the
project manager and maybe one or two other key people from the project team,
meeting with a review team convened for the purpose.
The
PA review gives an independent view of the project status and makes specific
recommendations for action. Project managers include results of their most
recent PA review (including status of actions) in their reporting to the
regular management review meetings.
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