Understand the maturity of your Programme
HEALTH CHECKS / ASESSMENTS
A Programme / Project Health check is a learning exercise! A snapshot that identifies things going well and areas that need improvement.
Simply put, an aim is an assessment of performance aligned to objectives and compliance with organisational processes and standards.
When should the checks be carried out? There are generally two approaches:
Perform a health when the project runs into trouble – to try and find out what went wrong and why.
Perform checks at set intervals, to find any potential issues before they actually become a problem.
What should you be looking out for? The following are five categories of warning signs that can be identified by using health checks.
Conformity / consistency – making sure that every part of your project conforms to the practices applied to other projects and the organisation.
Validating the business case – this check looks at the project’s objectives and goals, throughout the life of the project, making sure that the focus is still on the bigger picture.
Project finance control – focuses on the costs that you expect to be incurred, historically and in the coming months
Risk assessment – some PMs have been known to perform this as a tick-box exercise and then leave it. This check examines the risk management plan and makes sure that any risks have been formally noted and pro-actively managed and addressed.
The human element – successful project management is a team effort. Thus, the PM needs to ensure that good and productive relationships are maintained with all stakeholders. Healthchecks looks at how well teams work with each other, how satisfied clients are and any other stakeholder involvement that could have impacts.
Healthcheck report – at the end of the assignment, Butler Meridian will produce a comprehensive report that sets out:
What is working well and the positive aspects of the programme
What is not working well and why. A set of actions that will remedy the identified shortfalls in the programme. This will look at Scope, Time, Cost, Communication, Risk… the list goes on. Indeed, every aspect of project management will be put under the spotlight and examined in detail.