Moderator: Jo, reviews are essential to project success. What types of review are there? And when would we undertake them?

Jo: Okay, so you can-, you can essentially break types of reviews into two types. There's event-driven, and event-driven happens, sort of, at the end of a phase or the end of a stage, so it's the end of the phase that we're hitting that causes the, the review. But then we have time-driven, and those aren't driven by events, they're driven by a time. So, for example, we might do some kind of progress review on the first Monday of every month. The-, that first Monday is what triggers that review, whereas the event is something has happened.

Moderator: What are the main types of review that would take place in a project?

Jo: Okay. So, we, we do have certain points in the project where we definitely need to review what we've done and where we're going. So, we've got, sort of, four main types. You've got the gate review, we've got stage review, post project review and the benefits review. So, in a gate review, it, it-, it's called exactly that because when you take up all your information, which will be the business case, the risk level, project plans, you know, the resource requirement, it'll either be signed off and the gate will open and you can move to the next phase. So, gates are at the end of the phases and they're a go, no-go decision point. Stage reviews happen at the end of every stage. So, within deployment, you've got stages and it makes sense that, you know, at a certain point, when you've done enough work, again, we just sanity check that we're moving in the right direction. Do we need to change anything because we've got this environment of certainty? And, again, it's based on business case risks, updating the project plans, the stage plan, making sure that the budget's still sufficient. And, again, it'll open a gate, so it's a stage review that we'll progress to the next stage.

At the end of the project when we have finished all of the work, we do a post project review, and that's reviewing what we planned to do versus what we actually did, and looking at what are the differences between the two and how did that actually happen? So, what was the initial budget and what did we end up spending? And what was the discrepancy and then how did that, kind of, grow? Because it does normally grow. But it also covers things like lessons, so, you know, what have we learnt from this project that we can implement in the future. And then, after the project, during-, when we-, we've deployed and whatever you're-, you've produced is in operation, we can do a benefits review. So, did we improve the situation? Did we reduce the costs or did we improve productivity? And were there any unexpected benefits from, from, from our activities as well?

Moderator: So, why are regular reviews so important?

Jo: Oh, they're absolutely essential. The, the-, one of our, sort of, key success factors is to have regular reviews so you can-, at certain points you will look back and say, 'Right, have we done what we needed to at this stage? Has anything changed? Do we need to change? And, you know, is, is-, should the project still be happened?' So, we're recommitting to the business case. There was an organisation that I worked for and they actually wasted the best part of £4 million because they didn't have enough regular reviews. And when we looked back over the paperwork, their business case actually failed about three months into the project, but they carried on for another year because they weren't doing the proper reviews. So, it just gives you that opportunity just to sanity check. Do you still want to put this investment in? Do you still want to bet on this project before going forwards?

Reviews | PMAPMIC-BL |

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