Conduct Project Assessment

1. Align on Objectives

Typical objectives of an assessment include:

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  Identify major problems early before they materialize and affect your project's progress.
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  Once identified, ensure that project problems have action plans and leadership engagement to resolve them.
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  Ensure sufficient leadership governance is in place to direct project strategies and decision-making.
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  Validate that the right people skills are employed to produce the right solution.
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  Verify project management methods, monitoring, and communication to track progress, forecasts, and deliverables that produce positive results.

2. Select an Assessor

Evaluate and choose an expert with the experience, skills, and knowledge related to your project's scope.

Ensure the assigned assessor is independent and objective regarding your project.

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  Avoid conflict-of-interest situations where an assessor has a stake in any organization involved in your project.
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  Often, a partner involved in your projects, like a software vendor or consultant, assigns their assessor.
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  If that happens, your team will get a "filtered" report biased in favor of your partner's interests in your project.

To get a genuinely unbiased evaluation, hire an assessor who isn’t connected to any constituent or partner involved in your project.

Establish an Approach

Create a plan to monitor and evaluate your project. Incorporate this plan into your overall project strategy.

Your assessor should add to your assessment approach and method as needed.

The plan should cover the assessment's:

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  Scope
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  Timing
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  Roles
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  Deliverables
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  Communications
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  Assessment Report

As part of finalizing the plan, the assessor should meet with various stakeholders to confirm their understanding of the work, issues, risks, expectations, assumptions, and other relevant factors.

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  Project objectives
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  Organization and roles
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  Scope
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  Methods
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  Financials, such as budgets, actuals-to-date, etc.
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  Risks, issues, and decisions
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  Expectations
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  Other factors like assumptions, relationships, team engagement, and more.

During those discussions, constituents should be informed about the assessment process and encouraged to give feedback on any specific concerns or areas that the assessment should focus on.

4. Conduct Assessment

Conduct assessments before your project begins and at important cycle or activity completion points. Unexpected circumstances or urgent issues might require more frequent evaluations.

Before starting the project, your assessor should review key Initiate cycle deliverables for clarity, alignment, and content. These deliverables include:

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  Partner proposals/statements of work
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  Project charter or mission
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  Project approach and plan
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  Project organization and roles
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  Resource (people, time, CAPEX/OPEX) plans
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  Governance plans

After your project kicks off, perform assessments following each primary work cycle, such as Decide, Design, Develop, and Deploy. Recheck the evaluated deliverables for any updates, etc.

Additionally, review key deliverables and activities, such as business requirements and execution elements--SPRONTO™.

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  Strategy
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  Process
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  Relationships
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  Organization
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  Network -- logistics, people, and technical
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  Technology
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  Operations

Review other deliverables such as:

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  Dependencies -- business cycle and other projects
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  Commercial, aka partner contract, concerns
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  Leadership, team, and constituency alignment and engagement
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  Project management and leadership
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  RID -- risks, issues, and decisions

5. Report Assessment Results

A preliminary assessment findings and recommendations report should be drafted and reviewed with project sponsors, stakeholders, and leadership.

Finalize the report and integrate it into your overall findings and recommendations.

Perform appropriate follow-up on identified issues and resolution plans.

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  Provide updates during weekly project status and release meetings, as well as monthly governance leadership steering meetings, to ensure the closure of identified problems, issues, and risks.

Assessment findings might be difficult to hear, but they are necessary to diagnose and develop a treatment plan to improve your project's health.

Some findings may also be sensitive:

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  Team members or others might take it personally.
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  Don't assign or direct blame.
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  Maintain a professional tone in the dialogue.
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  Use problems, issues, and risks that surfaced as a "teaching" moment.

Your project may require significant surgery, based on the assessment"treatment plan," to preserve its benefit and budget integrity.

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  Translation: You may need to compromise on some features and functionality in return for a successful project outcome that preserves most of your project's benefits.

6. Conduct a Post-Project Assessment

Post-project assessments may take the form of an After Action Dialogue, also known as lessons learned.

A post-project assessment will address and bring closure to many, if not all, of the topics covered in previous assessments.

Facilitate one of more workshops with key stakeholders, partners, and team members.

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  The post-project assessment usually includes one or more sessions led by an independent facilitator to evaluate lessons learned, identify improvement opportunities, and more.
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  As appropriate, designate a leader to deliver a lessons-learned briefing to senior leaders (both business and technology) and other project teams.
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  Organize lessons learned and knowledge created into a shared enterprise-wide knowledge repository for constituents and leaders to utilize on future projects.