Objective Information for Executive Management

How Is The Project Doing?

It can be extremely difficult to get a clear picture of the status of a software intensive project. This is particularly true if there are not regular deliveries of an evolving working system. The quality of the work to date and the amount of work left to do can be difficult to judge. These difficulties are magnified when general management teams or end users are trying to assess a software project.

Assessment

An effective assessment of a project may need to establish:

• How appropriate is the project process?
• Are the system concept, requirements and definition adequately managed?
• Is there a clear concept or route for establishing the concept?
• Is the system design adequately managed?
• How appropriate is the system definition and the system design?
• How rigorous have quality assessment activities been?
• What levels of defects has quality assessment detected?
• The risk of undetected quality problems.
• Whether plans for the remaining project work are appropriate.
• The proportion of work that remains to be done.
• Major risks to the future success of the project.

The assessment provides executive management with the objective information on which to base key business decisions. Assessments can be performed on external suppliers as part of a contract or on in-house development projects to confirm and validate the local project management status accounting

Assessment is applicable throughout a project's lifecycle. Early assessment can review the feasibility and risk during project planning and definition activities. Subsequent assessment can address design status, implementation progress and system quality.

The Project Assessment & Review Process

Project Audit

The assessment is based upon an audit of the project and a technical assessment of key project deliverables. In addition the assessment can involve demonstrations and/or rapid evaluation of the system under development.

Reporting

The findings are prepared and reviewed with the project team. Any queries on the findings that are raised by the project team will either be resolved or highlighted as outstanding queries in the report. The report form and terminology is matched to the target audience. Where necessary explanatory background information is included.

Review & Recommendations

A project assessment can form the basis for a project review. A review is appropriate where there are significant issues with a project. The review aims to determine whether the project should continue in its current form and, if so, to establish the best, least risk, way forward for the project. A review can be a root and branch, top to bottom re-assessment of the project. An independent view can help to break out of the tunnel vision that drives projects to remain on a failing route until disaster strikes.

A review addresses matters such as:

• Whether the scope and objectives of the project need revising or clarifying.
• The priority, sequence and grouping of functionality into separate deliveries.
• Alternative solutions.
• Critical corrective rework.
• Resource requirements and the availability of equipment and tools.
• Project re-planning.
• Organisation of the project.
• Development processes.
• Improved or additional quality control.
• Project cancellation.

SQC Capabilities

Experience

Our experience enables us to deliver effective project assessments and reviews. This experience encompasses:

• Working on a wide variety of projects in multiple industry sectors, using various technologies for different system types.
• Projects ranging in size from small, four engineer, projects to major multi-team multi-site ventures.
• Experience of a wide variety of development strategies.
• Understanding the need to get the level of organisation and discipline right and the impact of too little or too much discipline.
• Practical project management experience.
• Practical quality control and quality assurance experience.
• A clear understanding of the fundamental elements of successful projects.
• A professional pessimism about the performance of unproven software.

We supplement this experience with technical knowledge from external specialists where an assessment warrants this.

Service

SQC can:

• Perform objective assessments of a project status.
• Report the assessment in a form appropriate for the intended audience.
• Review and report on the likely course of a project.
• Formulate recommendations to reduce project risk.

Approach

Assessments are performed using a systematic disciplined approach. In so far as it is possible assessment findings are traced back to objective evidence or to a reasoned argument. The nominal assessment process is:

• Initial familiarisation with project.
• Kick off meeting and initial reading material identification.
• System demonstration (if appropriate).
• Project documentation / deliverable review and issue clarification.
• Preparation of assessment questionnaire.
• Assessment audit.
• Targeted system demonstrations / rapid tests (if appropriate).
• Analysis and clarification.
• Reporting.