What is it? Assurance is the deployment of a set of policies, processes, systems and tools aimed at safeguarding organisations’ investments. It includes both predetermined assurance regimes (stage gates and check points etc.) and ad hoc interventions such as health-checks and surgeries.

What it is not? Assurance is not a retrospective inspection of the causes of failure or an audit of processes and tools applied. After the event it is too late to assess or alter the initiative’s achievement of success; hence assurance has no retrospective aspects.

What’s different afterwards? Senior management and the sponsor community have a high degree of confidence that the portfolio of investments in change are at a supportable level of cost and risk for the reward they represent. The less viable initiatives are placed under closer scrutiny or closed before ‘sunk costs’ have become unendurable. Corporate husbandry of resource (both financial and human) has improved.