Project Health Check

Project Health Check
Christopher William Young

While the Project Health Check is one of our most popular services, I am still often asked what a “health check” is for and why an organisation might want to undertake one. I thought I would outline the main objectives and benefits of undertaking a health check as I find them extremely valuable as a tool for ensuring project success.

The key objectives of a Project Health Check include:

– To determine the current state of the project and detect problems early enough so that the project team has the capacity to deal with them.

– To identify factors that will enable or disable the potential of delivering the anticipated outcome and benefits of the project. Key areas under review include the following:

• Completion and clarity of Business Case / Benefits Realisation Plan
  • Sufficiency of analysis and translation to definition of project outcomes
• Adequacy of Stakeholder Commitment & Support
• Adequacy of Project Initiation Process
• Adequacy of Scope Definition & Verification
• Adequacy of Requirements Definition & Verification
• Appropriateness of Project Approach
• Appropriateness of Project Organisation Structure & team
  • Skills, knowledge and experience of Project Manager / Team Leaders
  • Demonstrated competency of Project Manager / Team Leaders
  • Skills, knowledge and experience of project team
• Adequate and timely risk identification, analysis , management and control
• Realism & Executablility of Project Plan (schedule) taking into account:
  • Completeness of Project Plan
  • Appropriate level of work decomposition
  • Appropriate work steps such as:
    • Project Initiation / Problem Definition
    • Requirements Definition
    • Analysis /Design (System Performance, System Capacity, IT infrastructure)
    • System Development/Testing (Conversion, Application Security, Interfaces, Testing Co-ordination, Functional Testing, Business Acceptance Test Planning, Regression Test Processes, Integration Test Planning)
    • Process Development/Testing (internal controls in process design)
    • Change Management (Organisational Impacts, Communication and Training)
    • Implementation Planning including Support Planning
  • Reference to appropriate IT standards, processes and methods
  • Sequencing of tasks in a logical sequence to deliver desired outcomes instead of silos of work by functional area
  • Dependency definition ( doing the right tasks at the right time)
  • Appropriate sizing of work into manageable packets of work
  • Accuracy of work effort and duration estimation
  • Adequacy of resourcing levels and appropriateness of types of resources applied
  • Sufficiency of contingency planning
  • Inclusion of checkpoints linked to appropriate implementation of deliverable (document) review sign off and management
  • Appropriateness of wording in plan to enable its use as a communication document and management document
  • Ability to baseline project plan and manage variance to plan
• Communication Planning
  • Thoroughness of Stakeholder needs assessment
  • Appropriateness of Information distribution
• Adequacy of Project Monitoring and Control
  • Accuracy, adequacy and timeliness of performance reporting, replanning and change management
  • Implementation of appropriate inclusive project status and team meetings
  • Implementation of appropriate Steering Committee
  • Adequacy of Issue Management and appropriate scope change control
• Adequacy of resource procurement process vendor and contract management
• Adequacy of Financial Management including:
  • Development of project budget and expenditure forecasts
  • Implementation of adequate, accurate and timely processes to manage and report project cost

– To analyse findings and present detailed recommendations addressing each of the issues identified.

Overall, this helps to ensure a shared understanding and commitment between the project team & the ultimate business stakeholders to a realistic and executable strategy to resolve issues as agreed.

Christopher William Young is the founder of White Water Consulting and is a senior consultant with a broad knowledge and experience in financial services, project management, change management and information technology. His areas of focus include delivering business-aligned IT strategy and implementing best practices in process improvement, project management and software development process. White Water Consulting (http://www.whitewater.com.au) specializes in the successful delivery business critical projects and provides practical solutions to designing and implementing information technology strategy.