{"id":12382,"date":"2019-07-09T11:44:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T23:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psoda.com\/global\/?p=12382"},"modified":"2024-03-19T00:16:43","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T00:16:43","slug":"an-easy-ten-minute-guide-to-project-health-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psoda.com\/global\/2019\/07\/09\/an-easy-ten-minute-guide-to-project-health-checks\/","title":{"rendered":"An easy ten-minute guide to project health checks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSetting up a project health check programme can be a bit of a mission. You need to make sure you cover everything regularly without annoying the people actually doing the work.
\nIn this easy ten-minute guide I\u2019m going to talk you through how to set up a health check programme that will deliver the required level of assurance and not annoy the people delivering the projects!<\/p>\n

What is a project health check?<\/span><\/h2>\n

A project health check is an independent review of a project to make sure that it\u2019s doing what it says it will and that the supporting documentation is up to date and in good order.
\nSomeone who\u2019s independent of the project will always do the checks – a project manager will never audit their own project, for example. Health checks are a planned activity and it’s rare for someone to do an unplanned check.<\/p>\n

Different ways to do it<\/span><\/h2>\n

Project health check programmes are as varied as projects. Each organisation will have its own way of doing things. You need to ensure that every project is visited at least once during its lifecycle. Ideally it would be more but resources are often constrained and there may be hundreds of projects in flight at any one time.<\/p>\n

The way I did it<\/span><\/h2>\n

When I\u2019ve been responsible for setting up a programme of health checks, it\u2019s very much been driven by the needs of the business. There\u2019s definitely not a one-size-fits-all template out there. What I have done though, is refine my questionnaires so that they can be used in multiple situations, which makes life a lot easier.
\nIn one organisation there were over 1000 projects in flight at a time and there was no way that a team of five of us was going to get round to them all. What we did was prioritise \u201chigh risk\u201d projects \u2013 those with a budget of over a certain amount, were highly significant to the business or were high profile. We then scheduled the rest based on end date and whether they had or had not been checked in the previous audit schedule. Any projects that hadn\u2019t been checked in two years were automatically added to the list.
\nHealth checks in this organisation typically lasted a week and involved in-depth interviews with multiple people. It was really intense, took up a lot of people\u2019s valuable time and was also pretty stressful for everyone involved. The programme was also universally hated by the project teams, which made it even harder to do our jobs.
\nDid it get results? Somewhat. Was it a good use of resources? No. Could it have been done better? Absolutely!
\nWhen I moved on to my next job, I decided I was going to set the health check programme up very differently. I wanted something that would cover all the projects regularly but without being a disruption to the project team. I also needed to make sure that the projects had in-depth checks where the team was interviewed face to face. Finally I needed to take into account the independent QA checks that were required to maintain external certification and compliance with government standards.
\nThe programme I set up had three different levels and was planned at programme level.<\/p>\n

Level 1 check<\/span><\/h3>\n

The level one check was the most frequent, and least \u201cinvasive\u201d check. It covered the following areas:<\/p>\n