NEED FOR ASSURANCE
Are Your Programs and Projects Meeting Expectations?
♦ How do you demonstrate that your portfolios, programs and projects are providing best overall value for stakeholders?
♦ How do you know if your key initiatives are delivering the returns promised in the business case?
♦ Is a critical program creeping over budget, behind schedule, out of scope or causing some concern to stakeholders?
♦ How effective is your planning, controls, reporting and approvals framework at ensuring efficient delivery of sustaining, competitive and effective business outcomes?
♦ How wide is the gap between your stakeholders’ expectations and the performance / value that should be attainable?
♦ How are you managing the risk of not your stakeholders’ expectations?
♦ Are your managers and their support staff so engrossed in dealing with day-to-day issues (fighting fires) that they miss the big picture and disappoint stakeholders(as needs change over time)?
♦ Who is ensuring your third party providers are executing in a manner that delivers incremental value?
♦ Is there an explicit process for dealing with the important issue areas above?
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Programs and major projects involve multiple stakeholders and are becoming increasingly more complex, while requiring extended timeframes and a range of skilled resources. Expectations of performance and value can vary significantly with stakeholder viewpoint, circumstances and timing of consideration.
Programs and projects in general have a poor record of meeting expectations, especially in terms of outturn cost and anticipated delivery schedule, thus reducing return on investment and stakeholder satisfaction. Without a framework and process to address these and other important aspects, organizations are vulnerable to business and reputational harm.
A major challenge, particularly for large orgnizations, is in being able to demonstrate to shareholders and other stakeholders that best overall value is being provided. So often, project
development and / or implementation teams are unaware of the overall value expected from their undertakings.
For example:
❖ Business goal-setting persons and their performance criteria are often absent during project development
❖ Return on investment (R.O.I.) criteria are not clearly communicated and therefore not necessarily attained
❖ Key knowledgeable people are lost to the next critical program or project
❖ Information may not be passed on and many assumptions are then made by the next wave of program or project staff.