Insights From Our 3 Minute Project Health Check Responses in 2021

by Nicki Carruth | Jan 5, 2022 | Project Assurance

We believe that knowledge about our field of expertise is invaluable to providing the best possible quality assurance to our clients. As a team of project experts who’ve worked in the trenches, and provided countless QA reviews to New Zealand’s public and private sectors, we have a wealth of first-hand experience to apply to our work. But this experience is also coupled with internationally-proven project management methodologies and standards, keeping our clients adhering to best practices.

There’s a third source of insights that’s uniquely applicable to us; our 3 Minute Project Health Check responses. We developed this tool in 2020 and have been hearing from project teams and stakeholders for all of 2021 as to the challenges they are facing.

The series of questions and their connection to certain success factors has given our team a much more up to date gauge of where NZ’s projects are at. We’re able to apply these learnings to our professional engagements and keep clients informed about common challenges shared among many.

Over 2021 we collected well over 500 responses to our 3 Minute Project Health Check and have come away with some really fascinating statistics on the state of NZ projects. In this article, we’ll share some of the insights we’ve gleaned.

There’s a lack of clarity on objective in some projects

Having a shared north star is a crucial part of delivering success in a project. When ‘done’ isn’t shared by stakeholders or project teams, budget and time are at real risk of blowing out. In our research, we found that nearly 1/3 of projects don’t have a shared understanding of what the project is designed to achieve. This presents a real risk for organisations who have specific business outcomes that deliverables are intended to drive. Projects (and programmes) should originate from a goal the business has. If this has not been effectively communicated to all involved, the leadership team may find a misalignment with what comes from the project and what’s actually needed. Clarity comes from communication, which in our findings is a challenge that manifests within a project in a number of ways. 47% of our respondents lack confidence that all dependencies in a project are identified and understood. This means that a project’s ability to progress based upon key milestones of delivery can be compromised through a lack of acknowledgement that particular tasks have been completed. Dependencies occur at the higher, strategic level, but on a more practical day to day level as well.

Change is common, recognising the impact isn’t

We know that change is almost unavoidable in many organisational projects. Requirements can change, as can the priorities of a senior leadership team. In our research, we found that 2/3 projects experience change to scope, time, cost or benefits after starting. While the reasons behind these changes will vary greatly, the insights from our other questions indicate that some key elements of good project governance and planning could be causing more post-launch changes and cost impacts than is needed. This would also mirror what we see ‘on the ground’ working with organisations that experience notable change to their agreed parameters. Crucially, our research shows that for over half of those projects where change was made, they didn’t consider the cost or time implications – for example, a scope change or business outcome. While our 3MPHC tool is for everyone, including project managers, stakeholders and senior leadership teams, a 50% response here suggests more than just a perspective issue. The challenge with technology-based projects is that implications are highly complex to even identify, let alone accurately convey to non-subject matter expert stakeholders. Having quality assurance processes in place can help to catch these downstream effects before decisions are made. While change isn’t in itself a negative – and often simply warranted, it’s important to know how even seemingly minor changes to direction or delivery can affect the success of the project.

Project teams are going against their best judgement to deliver outside expectations

Managing the balance between technical expertise of a delivery team and business strategic objectives of a leadership team is one of the trickiest parts of a Project Manager’s job. This balancing act can require a lot of meeting, listening and compromise. Despite someone in a project delivery team (including a PM) having a view on the best way forward, oftentimes a steering committee or leadership team will have other reasons for demanding a particular direction. Our research shows that 46% of project teams compromised the way they thought the project should be delivered to meet external drivers or expectations. There are a number of potential issues at play here. First, the communication between those in the trenches vs. leadership team often represents a long line of people and conversations. By the time the motivations for what leadership teams want hit a project team, the nuances can drop out. It’s why a comms strategy is worth prioritising within any large-scale project or programme. Having this in place could help project teams contextualise why they’re delivering what they are, and reduce the daily pressure on the PM absorbing what’s often ‘lively’ feedback from their team. Then there’s the matter of leadership not being aware of better alternatives; are the ideas of the project delivery team hitting the right ears? Is the governance of the project set up in such a way where these important conversations are happening? A technology-based project can be greatly improved by ensuring those doing the work have a line into the strategic decision making, or at the least have some influence over it via appropriate communication channels. A project team doing work they believe is not their best to placate a stakeholder puts organisations in a precarious position; extended periods of time where people are falling short naturally leads to them being driven to find more fulfilling work they believe in.

Poor governance continues to be a roadblock for projects

We ask our 3MPHC users about governance because we know how critical this function is to enable success. A project without an effective framework on which to make decisions or run the project will have a much harder time delivering the desired outcomes. And when a challenge arises (which it almost always does), there’s a massive risk for project progress to be derailed by incomplete assessment and decision making.

Governance is one of the components of a project we spend the most time on with many clients because it’s often under-served compared with some of the more delivery-based initiatives like hiring a team.
In our research, we found some challenges that respondents have in their project governance. Only 48% have previous governance experience on similar projects and 25% have governance boards where all members are experienced in similar projects. Experience plays an important part in any project, but the larger and more complex it is, the more important it is.

Being able to apply strong governance around the roles, responsibilities, reporting, risks and ‘terms of engagement’ with stakeholders sets a project up for much better resilience to outside factors. If the project proceeds without an application or knowledge of the granular details of governance, the future of the project are likely to involve more moments of slow down, conflict, missed milestones and budget overage.

But when governance is in place, it’s not always functioning how organisations are intending it to. We found that over 40% of those completing the Project Health Check felt governance was not working well. This can be due to any number of the components of governance falling short but risk management and mitigation was certainly an element found wanting in our findings. Nearly half of respondents felt the project wasn’t managing key risks and issues well – a factor that’s a common factor in derailing a project.

But what do the governance board or sponsors make of the information they receive? Only 38% of governance boards or sponsors had confidence in successful project delivery based on the information they were seeing, and only 45% of governance boards or sponsors claimed a clear understanding of project progress from project reporting.

This speaks to a lack of planning and process around how information and progress are managed. A good governance function should determine the cadence and outputs of reporting, and this should be designed to stay on top of issues that arise, as well as make the most informed strategic decisions possible.

Not enough resource or organisational buy in

Portfolio assurance is a valuable part of what we do for organisations because of the inherent challenges with running multiple projects in parallel. Running one project at a time is simply impractical with the scale of business outcomes typically required from a 12-month strategy. The same leadership team that will be responsible for many projects, often need to make decisions around which of these get the most time, budget and resources.

In our insights from our Project Health Check tool, and from what we see in our work, there’s a real challenge for organisations around giving each project the right tools for success; prioritising is almost always a must. 55% of our respondents felt the organisation hadn’t provided the needed resources and priority to successfully deliver, which while a high number, is not surprising. Transforming a range of business objectives into a series of BAU operations and project/programme-based initiatives is incredibly complicated. This is why quality assurance is a worthwhile function to include right at the beginning; an extra layer of scrutiny can be placed upon planned projects and provide leadership teams with a clear view of what’s possible. Having insufficient resources to complete work can affect projects where the original scope did not capture everything required to meet business outcomes. Or, the business has shifting requirements over time that aren’t able to be met with the resources available. An organisation benefits greatly by having comprehensive reviews in place for scope changes so that for each big decision made, there are clear impacts to be determined before proceeding.

Project Success

More encouragingly, 24% of respondents had a 75% or greater chance of success, meaning that they will likely be applying the fundamentals of project governance and best practices. At the other end of the scale, we found that around 20% of respondents’ projects were 80% or more likely to fail. The good news is that most projects are not beyond the point of saving. The earlier and more open to change an organisation is, the better the chance that independent quality assurance can help get things back on track. But no matter what state your project is in, it’s always worth talking to experts who can build a plan to turn things around.

Ready to take the 3 Minute Project Health Check Yourself?

You can quickly get a read on your project’s likelihood of success with our purpose-built, online tool. We developed this Health Check drawing upon extensive experience and recognised project assurance methodologies. You can get a more detailed report or get in touch with us after receiving your result. Best part? It doesn’t cost a cent!