Project Audits

Difficulty in delivering projects relate to problems in schedule, cost or quality.

Project audits can help determine the true state of a project, and whether the project looks to be on track to finish successfully.


Audits can also specifically point out whether good project management rigor and structure is in place.

Points to focus on:

1) Does the project manager have a good foundation (Project Charter)

2) Does the project manager has a grasp of the schedule and budget required to complete work

3) Does the project manager  proactively manage schedule, budget, risk, scope, quality and communication .

Focus on

• Efficiency:  Does the project use resources in a cost-effective manner?  Cost efficiency?  Schedule efficiency?
• Customer impact/satisfaction:  Quality, timeliness, customer satisfaction, meeting/exceeding specifications.
• Business success:  Meeting expectations in ROI, market share, cash flow
• Future potential:  Will project lead to future business prospects?

Cover

1. Project status, in all dimensions

2. Future projections

3. Status of crucial tasks

4. Risk assessment

5. Information relevant to other projects

6. Limitations of the audit

How:

Requirements

• What was the project objectives
• What determines the success of the project and what does failure look like?

Design

• What was the design
• Can you show it in block diagram

Planning

• what  were the estimates - ETL / Services
• resourcing
• Began with few ETL - added as became free
• Services scope added in Jan, resources as became free
• How was the Project plan drawn up, is it current
• High level plan - reverse from the go live date
• All tracking in Jira
• Dependencies called out on a weekly basis
• Project planning done with team on Friday or Monday
• Burn down for tracking progress in UK - cited in meetings
• Go live schedule
• Risks on the project and their mitigation

Tracking

• Using Daily standup
• 
  

Quality

• How are we ensuring quality
• What is our testing approach
• SIT - Engagement by India PM
• UAT - Engagement by UK PM

Development / Execution

• Daily Standups

Configuration Management

• ETL - in clearcase
• Services in clearcase, to migrate when SVN is available

Process documentation

• ETL - Design, TSD (mapping sheets), LDM, PDM
• Services - Service contracts

Risk and Issues

• Risk log - what are the primary risks and issues
• Discrepancy in data
• Data tester - automation of testing - coverage is on all tables
• SIT Testers - verifying independently
• What are the mitigation plans

Communication

• Status reporting - Weekly (on monday's)
• Notes are published before the meeting on next steps
• Meetings schedule - Design discussion - every week on wednesday
• Notes are published in email on next steps
• Steering Committee
• Attended by PM in UK
•