>>Hi, I'm Devin Deen, Content Director, here at ProjectManager.com.
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>>Hi, today we're going to talk about how to audit a project.
When you go out at a project, you're looking for two things.
You're looking to make sure that the project is doing the right things.
Secondly, you want to make sure the project is doing things right.
When you go out to that project, you want to make sure that the project team and the
stakeholders, everyone around that project is receiving that audit with open arms.
For example, you don't want to have the project team think that they are being put under the
microscope and looked at through a magnifying glass about all the little bits and pieces
that they're doing.
Instead, you want to have that project team embrace that audit.
It's similar to the way a coach is going to coach an athlete.
That athlete is looking forward to getting the feedback and the pointers from their coach,
so they can refine and improve their process and be a better athlete.
That's the kind of culture and environment you want when you go into the audit.
If you have the previous culture where people are being a little bit scared that they're
going to get looked at or asking questions about the project, I'd prefer not to actually
do the audit at that time and improve the culture.
Once that's done, get their defenses down, if you will, and open to hearing any feedback
that you have, then go ahead and commence the audit.
How do you do the audit?
First things first.
Look for the project doing the right things.
Doing the right things is all about the mechanics of how that project is operating.
Go to the project manager a day before you need the following items.
First off, you want to ask them for the last four to six status reports.
Next, ask them for the issues, the risks, and the change request registers.
After you get those registers, ask them to give you the statement of work, with a project
charter or terms of reference, whatever that project used to initiate the project.
It might be just a kick off presentation.
You're looking for the starting point, the baseline of the starting point of that project.
Lastly, what you want to get is also the payment of their suppliers.
Get the last three months.
If the project has only been running for a month, get the last month's, OK.
Basically, you want to get some evidence of the project paying the suppliers as it has
commenced.
When you get these artifacts together, like I said, you should only give the project manager
a day's heads up.
They should be able to produce these things quickly for you if they're using project management
software, like ProjectManager.com, for example.
They should just give you a login and direct you to where they have these various artifacts
within the software, so you can view them.
If they ask for a week to come back, to give you this information, that should actually
be a signal to you that there is some trouble, because what they're trying to do is then
update those registers and take the week to do it.
A project that's operating healthily and doing the right things, should have this information
updated on a weekly basis as part of the mechanics of the project.
When you get these registers, what you want to look for is activity.
If you have a kick off presentation or statement of work, you've got a scope statement of what
it's doing, then you actually find out that the project's doing something slightly different,
you want to see evidence of that change in a change request register or a change control
form.
If that doesn't happen.
If that change request form or that item of change isn't in the register, then that's
an indication that the project is encountering scope creep, but not documenting that.
That's a problem.
It's a problem because you'll have stakeholders that are expecting one thing from the statement
of work or the project charter and actually they're getting something different because
the project is doing something different.
Not having that difference be documented or agreed by the stakeholders or the budget holders
of the project.
Likewise, if you look at an issues register and there's the entries from the start of
the project, but if the project has moved on in time, let's say it's two months in and
there's no change on those issues that were actually keyed in during the start of the
project and project planning, then there's an evidence there that the project actually
isn't managing issues actively.
Likewise with the risks.
You should see changes in those registers as compared to when those registers were first
put together.
If you're not seeing any evidence of those changes, that's an indication to you that
the project is actually just in a reactionary mode.
They're letting the project and the tasks manage them versus the project management
team and the team members actually managing the project.
These are the things that project team uses to actively manage a project to make sure
they stay on the rail, stay focused on the scope, hit their deadlines and deliver things
that are fit for purpose.
You're looking for smoke here.
If you see any smokey items, things that look a little bit off, then there is nine times
out of ten, there's some fire behind that smoke.
It might be cause for you to open up the hood a little bit more on that project and do a
more detailed audit.
Let's say that you've looked at these registers and the artifacts and the project team is
doing the right things.
The next thing you want to look for is, are they doing things right.
Doing things right is all about delivering their artifacts or working in a healthy manner,
that is, with quality.
As an example, when you're looking into doing things right, there's a couple of things you
want to get together.
First off, I'd get the last three deliverables or artifacts.
Let's say for example, you're developing some software and you're in the design phase of
the project, go get the requirements document.
Go get the interview notes that the team members did when they were interviewing the end users
for the requirements for that piece of software.
If you are building a building, go get the blueprints for the building or go get a code
of compliance certificate, if you will, from the council, showing evidence that the construction
team has actually passed the plans through council and they endorse them.
You want about three deliverables.
Go talk to three team members.
I find that if you talk to one team member, you'll get one perspective of what's going
on in the project.
If you talk to a second one, you might get two perspectives.
Really, you want three perspectives or frames of reference to give you more of a rounded
view of how that project team is interacting and working together.
There's a theme here.
Go talk to three stakeholders.
Once you get the view of what the team is doing and you've seen evidence of their work,
go get the stakeholders view on that.
See what they have to say about how the team is communicating and interacting with them
and what they think about the quality of those deliverables.
When you get those deliverables, you certainly want to have a look at the acceptance criteria
for them and make a judgement call yourself to see if those deliverables meet the acceptance
criteria and if they've been signed off by the stakeholders.
These are the basics of doing a quick audit on a project.
It shouldn't take you more than two to three days to conduct this.
Really what you're looking for in these quick audits is if there are any issues that are
sort of come to mind that you may want to look at a little bit better.
Certainly at the back end of the audit, you want to get the project management together
and the rest of the project team, give them your feedback and help them hone and refine
their skills to make that project work in a more fluid manner.
If your project team, your stakeholders and your client culture is a functional one, they
will look at this audit as a part of the quality assurance process, something that they're
all looking forward to doing, not a bit of drudgery, but certainly something that they
want to do and they need to do, so they can get that feedback.
Just like an athlete would from a coach and improve the way they're working and get to
a better outcome.
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