PROJECT AUDITING : Client Requirements

Client requirements are the oversight, assessment and detailed reporting of the health of the project at critical project phase milestones.  This will be conducted through regular project audits that will be timed to coincide with critical project phases and deliverable milestones.  Longer duration project phases may require monthly audits to maintain an up to date assessment status.  Project audits will assess the completeness of project activity leading up to the critical milestone and will review planned future activities to ensure that the proper planning, commitments, and controls are in place prior to execution of the next phase.

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Client Objectives

Conduct phased milestone audits either monthly or timed to coincide with critical phases or milestones.

Produce detailed assessment after each audit which addresses schedule, budget, benefits, scope and quality as both a delivery metric and a process metric.

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Schedule : The project will come in on schedule, critical milestone targets are met, and adequate schedule contingency is available to mitigate schedule risks.

Budget : The project will come in on budget, interim budget targets are being met, and adequate budget contingency is available to mitigate budget risks.

Benefit : The project benefits are easily identified, monitored, and measured and the project benefits will be delivered as defined in the approved capital expenditure.

Scope : The project scope is clearly identified and verified via checkpoints and product functionality will be fully delivered as defined.

Quality : The project will be implemented with no critical or significant issues outstanding.

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Detailed assessments will be both backward looking (audit) and forward looking (expectations) for a comprehensive assessment of the current project state.

Project team will have the chance for feedback on assessment draft to give the project team an opportunity to respond to the Audit Report.  A meeting may be set up to go over specific issues and/or actions.

A final detailed assessment in the form of an Audit Report will be presented to executive management, Steering Committee, stakeholders and project teams.  (Distribution to be determined by management)

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Solution Description

The following chart outlines the standard project management life cycle (PMLC) phases.  The checkpoints and reviews are mapped to coincide with these phased milestones.

Checkpoints defined

C1 - Initiation Checkpoint - To verify that the appropriate financial and organizational commitments have been made, and define future expectations relative to the planning processes.

C2 - Definition/Elaboration/Build/Transition/Control Checkpoint - To examine specific areas of project management during development or execution of the plan.  This checkpoint will be treated as ad hoc based upon a management request or project issue, and will  cover the appropriate PMLC Phase(s), PMBOK Knowledge Area(s) (i.e., Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communications, Risk, and Procurement Management), or SDLC Phase(s) as required.

C3 - Close Checkpoint - To verify that the appropriate financial, functional, quality, and delivery elements of the project have been met, ensure that the new/modified system has been properly migrated into production status system decommissioned, and capture lessons learned. A subsequent checkpoint may be scheduled to verify that the benefits were achieved.

Reviews defined:

R1 - Definition Review - To verify that the appropriate level of planning has been performed, and define future expectations relative to the execution and control processes.

R2 - Elaboration/Build/Transition/Control Review
To verify that the project is progressing as planned against the project plan and schedule, and to define future expectations relative to the execution and control processes.

R3 - Post Implementation Review. To conduct a post implementation review of all phases and processes associated with the completed project against the project baseline in order to document lessons learned and best practices.

Audit Approach -

The approach to each checkpoint and review will follow roughly these steps and include these participants.  A pre- and post-audit timeline for each audit type is provided as a rough guide.  The primary participants directly involved in checkpoints and reviews are the senior and support project managers with project sponsors and team members required only where necessary.  There should be little to no disruption to the project team members executing project tasks.

Audit Report -

A detailed assessment is compiled after each audit and an Audit Report is produced which serves as a dashboard view of the project assessment for executive management.  Project metrics based on schedule, budget, benefits, scope and quality as both a delivery value and a process value are assessed in detail and given a rating from 1.0 (best) to 5.0 (worst) which correlates to a color coding.

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