Project Support, Project Assurance, Project Health Checks

Project managers are always 100% honest about the status of their projects - of course. Nevertheless, it can be reassuring for the project sponsor and other senior managers to have independent verification that the project is as healthy as the project managers says it is.

Not all team leaders, project leaders or project managers are expert in project management. Having assistance available to guide them through their first big risk assessment or to advise them on what controls are appropriate for their project can be very useful.

Project Assurance

It helps an organisation if all projects are adopting the same approach: all use the same names for documents (PDR? PDD? PID? TOR? Project Charter? - doesn't matter what we call it as long as we all call it the same thing) and we all play by the same rules. (This does not mean imposing huge bureaucracy designed for large projects onto small ones.)

But who is going to conduct independent health checks? Who is going to guide inexperienced project managers? Who is going to ensure all projects follow the same rules and tailor their controls to the real needs of the project? Indeed, who is going to own, promulgate, revise the organisation's project management rules, standards, guidelines?

Project Support

We'll call them "Project Support", though some organisations call them Project Assurance, Project Audit or even Project Office. The IT Project Management training course describes the role of Project Support, covers the sort of assistance they might offer to projects, explains how they conduct independent health checks and covers their role in writing/owning project management standards. This is one element of the course which looks at how IT software projects should be defined, planned, run and closed. The course stresses the role that Project Support can play in ensuring that projects do in fact adopt good practice. Buying an off-the-shelf set of project management standards and simply giving everyone a copy probably won't do must to improve project management on the ground. The course describes how actually to get team leaders, project managers and business participants to adopt good practice.

Project Health Checks

If you are someone charged with introducing a disciplined project management system into your organisation, or you want to improve your organisation's project management procedures, then this could be just the course for you.

Please click here for details of this comprehensive Project Management Course

   

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