Assurance Health Checks
Problem: A major government health and allied services provider has been able to significantly improve their ICT project delivery outcomes through implementing a business-wide assurance program.
Their ICT portfolio initiatives were being impacted by deviations from their project plans and they found some business areas across the state weren’t in alignment with delivery requirements.
As a result of internal policy changes, they were able to engage myP3 as an external independent assurance partner.
Project assurance is essentially performing a health check on project delivery through conducting an impartial review, creating a culture of continuous improvement, addressing capability gaps and providing reporting and feedback to all stakeholders.
This partnership significantly improved their project delivery outcomes across the organisation.
Objective: myP3’s objective was to help the client identify opportunities to increase delivery confidence and the overall success of projects and programs delivering applications and infrastructure solutions.
Assurance Partnering
Overview: Our process guarantees that the review team for each assurance activity consists of experienced project and program delivery practitioners to ensure all advice is meaningful and actionable.
myP3 continues to consistently apply a standard approach to the delivery of assurance activities for a gated review (Gate 0 through Gate 5), a health check or a deep dive review; the latter covering specific focus area to a single perspective or problem as requested by the senior responsible owner.
myP3’s approach covers the following sequence:
- A commencement meeting with the initiative’s senior responsible owner and initiative manager (project / program manager).
- Review of initiative profiling and assurance plans including review of actions to address previous assurance reviews.
- Desktop review of controls, schedule and approved artefacts.
- Multiple stakeholder interviews across delivery teams, suppliers, and customers/ users and change agents.
- Collation of evidence for findings against the seven P3M3® perspectives covering governance, control, benefits, risks, stakeholders, financials and resources.
- Delivery of draft and final report.
Our process for delivery of the final and draft report includes a walk-through with the senior responsible owner discussing the review team’s observations and findings, prioritised recommendations, delivery confidence assessment and rating, and a suggested action plan on who when and how to address each recommendation.
myP3’s engagements include singular or collective projects, a complete program, or program of work and range in profiling scale as prescribed by Queensland Treasury across any of the following risk-profiled levels, and their requirement for objectivity and independence from the initiative’s context:
– Level 1: internal
– Level 2: external to initiative
– Level 3: external to department
– Level 4: external to government
Delivery Confidence Gained through Assurance
Outcome: Following the reviews, business areas gained an increased understanding of the value of assurance activities and good practice in delivering initiatives. This is of key importance to those building their practice maturity from a low base.
The client’s delivery teams have quickly addressed risks and critical items identified due to the advice and guidance provided during each assurance review.
The client’s senior responsible owners (SROs) and project managers have fast-tracked their response to assurance reports by leveraging the suggested action plan (as a value add) provided by myP3.
myP3 has become a preferred partner across the organisation to assist all departments and regional offices in improving their understanding and capability of project delivery best practice.