Project assurance, often seen as an unnecessary cost, in reality is a highly effective tool used to increase the chance of project success and realise the right benefits.
Whether it be improving customer satisfaction, increasing revenue, creating a new business offering, improving operations or more, projects are run to bring about positive business change. Business change is not easy though, and projects have many moving parts and are often complex.
It is common for projects to struggle to gain momentum, take significantly more time than necessary to deliver the desired outputs, or seemingly run successfully but fail to deliver the benefits that were targeted. These issues, and more, are often not immediately apparent when a project is in the middle of execution. Key indicators of project health can be difficult to notice, especially when in the thick of it – it is hard to see the wood for the trees.
All projects can benefit from independent enquiry. The regularity of such reviews is variable, depending on complexity, risks and current state, however project assurance can provide valuable insights and benefits at all stages of a project, including initiation, during delivery, and the benefits realisation period following implementation.
Project assurance doesn’t need to be (and shouldn’t be) confrontational. It is not an audit, designed to find fault. Ok great, but what is assurance seeking to find? A typical audit would look at time, cost and quality – the how of project delivery – and often in retrospect. These are important metrics and a significant issue in any of these will affect project success, but they are secondary to the underlying reason for business change – what benefits will the project deliver. Project sponsors and senior leadership need real-time assurance that the benefits set out in the business case are still valid and they can still be delivered effectively and efficiently.
Good project assurance will look at the how (time, cost, quality) and the why (outcomes and benefits) and provide recommendations in a constructive way. It will answer the fundamental questions of whether the project is setup for success and whether it will still yield the expected organisational benefits.
It also shouldn’t be a costly and disruptive exercise. No-one working on a project wants to down tools for 2 weeks at a critical time in the project, only to be scrutinised and challenged on everything they have worked on. Good project assurance strikes a balance between finding out the real health of the project without disrupting the natural flow of events.
Ultimately, project assurance enables effective decision making, reducing the risk of project failure and ensuring that limited organisational resources such as time and money are used efficiently.
