How assurance has your back – helping you deliver successful projects time after time

by Nicki Carruth | May 10, 2022 | Portfolio Assurance

Quality assurance to some businesses is a concept introduced as ‘the ambulance at the bottom of the hill’ when things have gone wrong. And while that’s okay by us – we love seeing a once unhealthy project or programme get back on track – we really love seeing organisations incorporate quality assurance into every stage of their projects, from initial planning through to post-delivery retrospective. That’s where the true value of assurance comes from.

Some businesses don’t tap into external quality assurance, instead opting for internal skills and robust governance. This works well for a lot of things – you know your business best and having people with the applicable skills and smarts to apply to an inititive will take you a long way. , But having the impartial and objective nature of external reviews brings a different perspective that can help you see the things you miss through familiarity or just being too close to an initiative.

There’s many benefits to having external QA involved. In this article we’ll talk about some of these benefits.

Championing best practices in projects and programmes

We’re a team of quality assurance experts, but we all have extensive backgrounds in project and programme management and other related roles. It’s part of our job to help to embed good practices within projects and programmes. That doesn’t mean telling your PMs how to suck eggs, but helping the organisation become more effective – and indeed more enjoyable for PMs to work in. Each project manager isn’t able to make transformative changes to how an organisation conducts projects within a typical remit. As external independent quality assurance providers we can reference existing projects against best practices, as well as taking a broad view of the business itself and how projects are generally approached. We’re looking for the wood and the trees.

We’re able to come in at any point in the life of a programme or project and help to identify issues that may be compromising the likelihood of success.

When an organisation is looking to understand how it could collectively manage projects and programmes better, quality assurance providers like us are an excellent compliment to a leadership team. We specifically run portfolio assurance to help determine which projects are most important, but can then drill down into key projects to recommend improvements in how they’re being implemented.

Empowering teams with the tools to succeed

A common misconception is that quality assurance is about a policeman coming in to judge project management crimes. With this mindset, it’s only fair that project managers and delivery teams would be anxious around having independent QA people coming in. Our philosophy centres around advocating and supporting delivery teams to be successful, as well as benefiting the organisation or leadership.

The way a business achieves great results through projects and programmes is about making the way these are delivered a great experience for everyone. Without this, staff leave and projects stumble or even fail.

When we enter an existing project that’s in turmoil, we want to uncover the things that are getting in a project team’s way. Does everyone know who’s responsible for what? Is there simply not enough time given to important milestones? As an independent QA provider, we’re in the position to offer that objective assessment to leadership. Even if that same feedback has been passed up from PMs or other stakeholders, having a best practice, methodology guided QA process can be that final data point on which change is finally actioned.

Getting the right tools to delivery teams whether that’s equipment, time, money or even people related issues is core to ongoing success. We’re here to make that happen.

Providing guidance through unhealthy projects

It can be hard to find the answer when you’re in the eye of the storm; and that’s exactly where many of our clients find themselves when we get the call to assist. Quality assurance is often like pulling the emergency brake or releasing a pressure valve – we can come in and assess where the issues are but more importantly, develop a path out of the woods and towards project success.

Projects can become overwhelming for those working in them when there’s been constant issues. Loss of staff, unrealistic stakeholder expectations, continual scope creep, budget blow out – many of these things occur together which doesn’t make for the most enjoyable work life – or for great project success. Quality assurance will break all of these things apart and start building solutions to each of them. As the recommendations are actioned, the pressure starts to alleviate, making each sequential issue that much easier to address.

Independence is critical when internal politics or tensions are causing a project to fail. We have no horse in that race; our only goal is to help organisations’ projects succeed. And to us, success isn’t just a matter of making budget or deadlines, but happy, productive staff and stakeholders that are happy with the result.

Facilitating retrospectives and reflection after the fact

Looking back is the way we can look forward with more clarity and better decision making. As quality assurance professionals, we apply retrospectives to the project to not just inform the next project, but indeed how to share those learnings to the leadership team and apply them to the way projects can support each other.

When projects each run better by learning from mistakes and wins of the past, the juggling of a portfolio becomes far less clouded. The need to reprioritise projects can come from strategic imperatives or external factors rather than issues inherent within the projects themselves. As we always champion that ‘every project deserves to succeed’, our role is about transforming portfolio management into a positive, future focused activity vs. a remedial process to compensate for systemic problems in the way projects are governed and delivered.

Working with leadership teams to connect strategy with delivery plans

Quality assurance is not just about working alongside project teams doing the delivery. Much of what good QA does is help re-calibrate a business to adopt better practices generally. In order to affect such change, assurance professionals need to have access to the senior leaders in the business. This allows them to understand the strategic imperatives behind the organisation’s current portfolio of projects, and helps to contextualise why things are being done the way they are.

Great programmes are dependent on an accurate distillation of the strategy into a series of initiatives and projects. But many large companies and agencies can sometimes miss nuances of programme and project portfolio management, such as how each of these things interplays with one another. Are there hidden pieces of information or conflicting KPIs that could cause some of the projects to be derailed?

Assurance is about asking and answering these questions through both experience and methodology. From there independent assurance can be used to steer decision making with a much clearer view of what’s happening in the business’ portfolio currently.

Helping the business distribute its project budget

While quality assurance can never and shouldn’t replace the functions of a leadership team and financial expertise, it does offer a review and best practice reference point against which the portfolio’s budget splits can be measured. QA will establish which programmes and projects are providing the most value to the business’ overall objectives, and whether the current budgets are accurately divided up to support this.

Being able to provide sound guidance on where to allocate more (or less) budget across a portfolio requires a thorough review process as well as discussions with key stakeholders. This enables us to guide the leadership team around any potential budget decisions for specific projects.

Helping to assess the timeline of activity against set deadlines – are you being realistic?

Deadlines aren’t always easy to establish, especially if the project is in an area where the organisation doesn’t have a lot of precedent from other projects to reference. Even with careful analysis and scoping, deadlines sometimes don’t adequately cover the amount of work required for a given phase of a project.

As quality assurance profesionals, we’re able to get under the hood of each project and ascertain where there is late delivery due to issues in the project itself, or whether those deadlines are simply impossible to meet given what’s required.

It’s essential that businesses know the difference here, as making a portfolio decision based on an otherwise valuable project because of deadlines being missed can do the opposite of supporting a strategic vision.

Providing independent facts objectively about what needs to be done in the portfolio

The benefit of bringing in independent quality assurance is that there are no internal relationships or team politics that need to be worried about. This is not to say internal QA isn’t important. It is. But outside QA enables the business to make decisions based on recommendations free of concern around bias towards one business unit or another. Another huge advantage of having outside QA help to review a portfolio is that leadership teams gain the benefit of learnings from other organisations, through the recommendations we provide.

For example, if another business with similar structure and goals solved a portfolio challenge a particular way, we will be able to apply these learnings to your business in a way that’s meaningful for you. While we don’t share any information around other clients, we use this knowledge to offer tailored findings and recommendations to current engagements.

Providing confidence in decision making about what to delay and what to fast track

Reprioritising doesn’t always mean stopping projects entirely – although there may be instances where this is required. Instead, the portfolio assurance process will help leadership teams refocus efforts on key projects. This may entail additional resources or budget for some activities, and stretching out deadlines for other activities.

We help equip organisations with the intel they need to make these decisions. Adjusting projects is not something to be done frequently, but carefully at key moments with a strategic mindset. Quality assurance will help this process succeed.

Chat to our team to learn more about how we approach programme assurance.