What’s the value

Project governance – determining and directing the organisation’s resources to achieve the optimum value from its investments – has proved to be the single most important factor in delivering organisational change successfully.
The role of project governance is to provide a structured approach to decision making that is robust and repeatable.

Why is it valid

History and research has shown that there are four fundamental principles that need to be properly implemented for good project governance.

Ensure a single point of accountability for the success of the project: It is not enough to nominate someone to be accountable – the right person must be made accountable, and must have sufficient authority to make the decisions necessary and come from the correct area within the organisation be held accountable.

Project ownership independent of asset ownership other stakeholder group: Making the project owner or asset owner the sponsor, though superficially attractive, has shown to lead to wasteful scope inclusions and failure to achieve alternative stakeholder requirements.
Ensure separation of stakeholder management and project decision making activities: The decision making effectiveness of a committee is inversely proportional to its size. Not only can large committees fail to make timely decisions, those it does make are often ill considered because of the particular group dynamics at play.

Ensure separation of project governance and organisational governance structures: Project governance structures are established precisely because it is recognised that organisation structures do not provide the necessary framework to deliver a project.

What you will experience

The governance structures and remits are analysed in terms of decisions made and needing to be made, the information flows available for decision making, and the level of involvement. ‘Touching’ roles are closely scrutinised to ensure clarity of role and responsibilities is maintained, and that decisions are made at the appropriate level.

Meetings are analysed using a variety of techniques with the results being used to formalise structures and roles.

Issues, decisions and actions are tracked through the governance process to demonstrate timeliness and effectiveness.

How you might start

Two common starting points are when the organisation is faced with a difficult downsizing exercise for its project portfolio and the governance structures in place find it difficult to find an acceptable resolution to the question of “Which projects?” The other is when there has been a significant project failure and the cause is difficult to determine, but it may be due to a failure in the governance process.

Example models, methods & tools used

STOP
Workshop facilitation
Touching roles analysis

Clients we have used this method for

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What’s the value

A plan is a simplified view of what is intended to happen in a project and this is both the plan’s power and its weakness. Unless actual performance is monitored and compared to planned performance, with control actions in response to variances, it is unlikely that the planned outcomes will be achieved. It is, therefore the essential basis for adjusting project management actions to achieve desired outcomes.

Monitoring & control is embedded first in the process of planning (plans should be designed such that progress can be readily monitored) and involve processes and measures that are easy to implement, timely, well-understood, and unambiguous to all concerned.

Why is it valid

Management must understand the week-to-week actions and adjustments required in mid-flight to ensure that project delivers within its constraints to achieve its objective. Visibility devices (e.g. RAG) identify and quantify variances, and help management to interpret circumstances and respond accordingly. Years of practice in project management shows how important it is to have timely and accurate knowledge of the cost, productivity, level of stakeholder engagement, and the status of the project in the delivery and governance of projects.

What you will experience

CITI brings a suite of ‘dashboard’ components, benchmark values and a refreshing approach to monitoring and control – to quickly demonstrate how good information about a project can be used to improve reliability, performance and governance decisions. Governance groups become confident that they are in control of the initiatives, and that their decision making is guided by evidence rather than just by intuition. The benchmark data makes it possible to determine how effective management actions are in improving project performance and engaging stakeholders with the project.

How you might start

Existing monitoring and reporting methods are critiqued and where appropriate augmented. Management and other stakeholders’ information needs are addressed by introducing simple dashboards while the current reporting culture is deconstructed and challenged with a view to improving the efficiency and value of reporting data accurately and in a timely manner.

Example models, methods & tools used

Structured project report benchmarks and various dashboard tools (incl. milestone tracking, RAG indicators, stakeholder temperature charts, EVA, burndown graphs, etc)

Clients we have helped realise this value

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What’s the value

Many projects do not go according to plan and may cause significant concern to management about the best approach to recover or rescue the situation. Health checks, using a set of project benchmarks, compare actual and expected project status in order to identify root causes and remedial actions needed to make the project safe.
It is appropriate to conduct one of the three types of health check:

1. Type 1 checks whether the authority to proceed is soundly based on an accurate assessment of the state of the project;
2. Type 2 checks whether the objectives and benefits case remain viable and desirable;
3. Type 3 is more appropriate when it is suspected that the project is either in an irrecoverable position, or rapidly approaching one.

Why is it valid

CITI have developed benchmarks and metrics for a wide variety of project states, from ‘healthy but off-track’ to ’seriously moribund’. It uses these to evaluate projects and to recommend management actions to recover projects that are in flight.

What you will experience

Sponsors, key stakeholders and project managers are interviewed, often one-on-one or in small groups. Their perceptions of the project are calibrated against the business case, plans and status reports, and with perceived and actual project performance. All this information is analysed against benchmarks developed by CITI. Findings and recommendations are presented back clearly and succinctly to the management team.

The clarity and insights gained when carrying out this process give the governance group direction and confidence in their next steps and an understanding of the outcomes to be expected as a consequence of actions taken.

How you might start

When a member of the governance team, whether sponsor, key stakeholder or project manager becomes concerned about the status of the project, it is a good idea to bring in an independent review to identify the causes and establish an objective view of what, if anything, needs to be done. CITI send in a highly experienced project practitioner to agree the purpose, establish terms of reference, engage with project stakeholders, and initiate the health check.

Example models, methods & tools used

Mission model
Stakeholder engagement models
Business cases

Clients we have helped realise this value

The post Health checks appeared first on CITI consultancy solutions.

What’s the value

An effective PMO provides the organisation with a single view of its project portfolio, its project capability and capacity. It provides senior management with a view of how its investment is being managed, and the programme and project management community with a source of intelligence about the conduct of project processes and delivery.

Though projects are transient structures and are difficult for Boards to deal with, by implementing a PMO this problem is reduced, with typical departmental reporting to the Board once again being available.

Why is it valid

The steady and strong rise of PMOs in organisations across all sectors of business and government is a powerful demonstration of the value of PMOs. However, many organisations have also seen the steady erosion of value from their investment in PMOs as their role has been reduced to low level admin, which arises whenever the PMO fails to address the real needs of its different stakeholder groups.

What you will experience

The work begins by working with the demand side (the senior managers) and the supply side (the project managers) to establish what the need is, and how it can be satisfied. The PMO is then designed to deliver those things rather than developing a PMO ‘out of the box’ – an approach that satisfies few of an organisation’s requirements.

Techniques and tools, practices and procedures and then customised to deliver the design, PMO staff are profiled and developed to build their capability so as to deliver to the programme and project management communities expectations.

How you might start

A common approach is for CITI to put in a small team to establish the PMO design and to start gaining control of the project portfolio in terms of reporting against benchmark values. While this is going on a credibility is being built the in-house team is brought in and shadowed until they are confidently running the PMO, and the CITI team act as experts and coaches in the background.

Example models, methods & tools used

PMO benchmark analysis profiling tools
PMO audit
Facilitated workshops
PMO fast start kits

Clients we have used this method for

The post PMO appeared first on CITI consultancy solutions.

What’s the value

Investments in change are inherently speculative; we can’t be sure of their success. There is a risk to their ‘desirability’; the objectives may become invalid or the outcomes may become less valued. There is also a risk to the ‘do-ability’; the cost and risk of undertaking the initiative may outweigh the value position to the extent it represents a poor investment.
To protect against this an essential part of governance is to validate and confirm that an initiative is both desirable and doable before and during delivery. This assures the host organisation and sponsor that the initiative can achieve its objective and associated benefits. It also affirms that the objective remains valid and desirable. The practice of this principle, which should be applied to programmes, projects and work packages, is called ‘assurance’.
Assurance thus enables reduced cost of failure through earlier recognition and closure of unviable initiatives. Increased confidence in the viability and probability of success of change initiatives. Higher degrees of stability in scope and associated costs and projections. Reduced levels of portfolio and business risk.

Why is it valid

Over the past 25 years CITI have developed a robust assurance approach that gives a clear ‘line of sight’ of the true state of play, and a set of indicators as to what management actions are necessary to maintain or reset the direction. Such powerful analytical tools as the mission model, sources of complexity, and RACI models establish a prognosis for change initiatives ranging from large-scale corporate programmes through to a discrete work-packages.
The outcome is a higher degree of confidence that the right questions are being answered appropriately at the correct points in the lifecycle; consequently a commensurate level of over-sight is being provided to the change initiatives in light of their benefits, costs and risks.

What you will experience

Assurance involves an expert project practitioner, equipped with benchmarks and tools assessing the conduct of PPM processes and governance as carried out by the sponsor and the governance board, the project manager and the project team. It looks at project and programme environmental factors, the quality of decisions made, and the evidence that underpins the authority-to-proceed decisions.
The approach and depth adopted reflects the source and level of concern and the consequences of inappropriate governance actions on the organisation; in short, the cost of failure. Though it is generally the case that assurance is best received from an obviously independent provider, CITI takes considerable effort to embed good assurance practices and procedures into the PPMC of the organisations it works with – as the improvement in performance is usually very marked.

How you might start

Prevention being better than a cure, it is often the case that organisations call us to discuss assurance prior to commencing a particularly significant or risky project or programme. The first step is to analyse the sources of complexity, and review the proposed governance structure and the lifecycles adopted. Clear RACIs are established and lessons learned and benchmark values from other organisations set out as part of the de-risking process.
Other organisations call when they either are, or they suspect that they are, in trouble. They are looking for ways to establish the extent of the problem and proven ways of recovering or rescuing the initiative based on evidence of success elsewhere. The requestors are either the sponsor, a senior governance board, and sometimes the project or programme manager.

Example models, methods & tools used

Mission Model Analysis
RACI analysis
PCAT
Health checks
Surgeries.

Clients we have helped realise this value

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