Project Assurance: A Methodology for Keeping Your Supply Management Project on Track Part IV

In Part II we related Project Assurance — a comprehensive, proactive, and preventative methodology that goes beyond IV&V to address strategic project issues in a proactive manner so that potential issues are identified and mitigated before they become problems — to your Supply Management Solution Acquisition project and stated that you needed an outside Project Assurance specialist in order to achieve true project success.

So how does the Project Assurance Specialist insure true project success and why can it only be done by an outside Project Assurance Specialist? We will address these issues in this post.

How does the Project Assurance Specialist (PAS) do it? As made clear in Rob Prinzo’s No Wishing Required, the PAS uses collaborative intervention when conducting the health assessments at each of the six critical project points.

Collaborative Intervention is a process used by an Assurance Specialist that attempts to avert disaster by identifying the warning signs that problems are on the way and that the project could be in jeopardy if they are not addressed and the problems not mitigated. A collaborative intervention consists of three primary phases:

  • When Are We?

    Where is the project in the project’s lifecycle, what types of issues are likely to arise at this time, and what should the Assurance Specialist keep an especially watchful eye for.

  • What Has (Not) Been Accomplished?

    An objective top-to-bottom evaluation — focussed on what to look for in an effort to insure project expectations are aligned, resources and scope are appropriate, and the probability of success is high — is conducted and attempts to identify:

    • what are the real issues
    • what are timeframes that are realist
    • what can be done to align the work streams
    • what the indicators don’t tell us
    • what expectations are (still) realistic
  • How Can We Address the Issues That Have Been Identified?

    The findings of the assessment are presented to a cross-functional collaborative intervention team and the PAS works with the team to identify the root causes of potential issues, mitigations to deal with the root causes of the potential issues, and the implementation plans to implement those mitigations.

Why can this only be done by an outside Project Assurance Specialist? Return for Part V.