Let’s begin by defining a program health check review: It’s an independent assessment conducted at various stages of a program’s lifecycle ─ providing an objective evaluation of the program’s status in terms of scope, timeline, budget, risks, and overall performance.
Here are seven key benefits that regular health checks deliver:
- 1. Confidence in the program: As mentioned, a primary goal is to confirm that the program stays on track in terms of scope, timeline, budget, and objectives. This ensures that stakeholders have confidence in the program’s delivery.
- 2. Meeting the business strategy and requirements: It’s an opportunity to determine if the project will meet the business strategy as originally outlined and also helps clarify whether the business strategy has changed since the program’s inception.
- 3. Early detection of issues: A well-coordinated process, conducted in partnership with the project team, can identify any potential issues before they arise.
- 4. Opportunity to re-plan: Throughout the course of any program, it’s essential to assess the progress and determine if any changes or adjustments are needed to ensure success.
- 5. Improved decision-making: Provides decision-makers with the necessary information to make informed decisions regarding the project’s scope, timeline, resources, and budget.
- 6. Lessons learned: Evaluates current activities to identify those areas that are performing well and those that require attention.
- 7. Focus for the program team: Resources are often overstretched and under tight time pressures to deliver solutions. By scheduling time in the program plan, the team can step back from daily tasks to discuss their progress, issues, and challenges ─ confirming that the program will meet its original objectives.
Bottom line: The key to making a health check a valuable tool lies in how a firm plans and executes.
Highlighting Some Common Pitfalls
Here’s an example: An investment management firm, with AUM of over EUR 500 billion, was implementing a complex multi-year front-office program. The program failed to meet deadlines and was running significantly over budget. Most importantly, the deliverables lacked quality and did not fully meet business requirements.
After several steering board discussions, where even re-planned deliverables were not achieved, the board initiated a review of the program to determine the necessary steps to get it back on track. The board tasked the IT director, who was responsible for program delivery, with organizing and executing the review and reporting back to the board.
The IT director hired an external resource to perform the health check review, covering objectives, deliverables, planning, resourcing, and cost considerations. This external resource worked closely with the IT director and the IT delivery team to assess the issues encountered and help devise a plan to realign the program with its objectives.
After several weeks, the IT director and IT delivery team provided a revised plan, including increasing the budget and extending the timeline, to the board, which approved it.
However, over the following months, the same issues continued to crop up. Deliverables were still missed, and the firm spent an additional seven figures on the program, mainly on internal and external resource costs.
Eventually, the CIO, the main program sponsor, lost confidence in the team and its ability to deliver and decided to cancel the program altogether.
For those experienced in conducting program reviews and health checks, it’s clear that this was set up for failure from the outset for the following reasons:
An “audit” approach: As the program was running into numerous issues, this was viewed as an audit of the program by the IT delivery team ─ and not as an opportunity to review the program and place it on a path for success. During this one-time review, the project and IT teams viewed it as a critique of their work and grew defensive about the program. They interpreted it more as an audit of their efforts instead of an opportunity to re-plan and leverage lessons learned.
Poor communications strategy: The benefits and objectives of checkpoints were not communicated to the team ahead of the review commencing. These should have been communicated as an opportunity for improving and resetting the program.
By collaborating closely with the program team, firms should view these independent reviews as opportunities to not only identify areas that need improvement, but also to recognize what’s working well. They serve as a chance to communicate the successes achieved so far.
Insufficient scope statement: The scope statement lacked an objective to assess whether the program continued to align with business strategy requirements or to reevaluate the business strategy for any changes. These are crucial for any multi-year program. The scope statement also primarily focused on the IT delivery team and the issues it was experiencing, without fully involving all stakeholders and interested parties, who could have offered different perspectives on the challenges faced.
Inadequate governance: The steering board made the mistake of assigning sole responsibility for the review to the IT director. Instead, the steering board should have assigned resources to report directly to the board. The reviewer should have offered an independent perspective to the board, free of stakeholder influence.
Here are seven steps to ensure your firm’s program health check review is set up for success:
- 1. Schedule regular checkpoints: Include scheduled checkpoints in your program plan from the outset.
- 2. Define clear scope statements: Create a clear scope statement, so everyone understands the value and benefits of these checks.
- 3. Ask key questions: Make sure the scope statement is comprehensive and addresses key questions, such as: Should we continue with this program? Has the firm’s business strategy changed?
- 4. Focus on positives and improvements: Concentrate on what works, as well as what might need changing.
- 5. Provide clear information to the steering board: Give clear and definitive information to the steering board to ensure that appropriate program decisions get made.
- 6. Ensure independent governance: Make sure an independent team ─ reporting directly to the board and authorized to engage with all stakeholders ─ conducts these checks.
- 7. Communicate effectively: Clearly communicate the reasons and benefits of these checks to all concerned, so they are not perceived as an “audit” or “attack” on the program team.
How Can Cutter Help?
Cutter consultants are experienced in completing these program health check reviews and are adept at working with client teams to ensure that these reviews get executed correctly.
In addition, Cutter consultants have access to a wide range of accelerator tools, including a review framework, to ensure these checks get executed efficiently.
If you want to learn more about Cutter’s consulting services, please contact us at [email protected].
