Travelling and Auditing Projects

I know that this may seem a little unusual a combination for a blog title. I have been auditing projects for sometime now. I am always fascinated to identify the root causes of projects in crisis and then to provide the project manager and team with clear strategies on how to turn their projects around. Having created tremendous, measurable success on many construction, heavy industry and IT projects I was asked to develop a workshop on How to Audit Projects and Provide Risk Assurance. I hadn't really thought about educating others on my process but decided to take up this challenge and develop a workshop.

That was a couple of years ago and since then I have delivered it successfully in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I'll be leaving in a few weeks to give this workshop in Jakarta on August 25 to 26, 2008. It is very practical. Participants keep telling me how much of an impact it has had on their projects. If you're interested in more information, drop me a line at mstanleigh@bia.ca It'd be great to meet you and see you there. I'd be happy to send you outlines and/or any other information you need.

All the best,

Michael

Providing Project Risk Assurance

My customers have told me and given us testimonials about how our coaching and training has improved their operational effectiveness. They love our articles and have learned a great deal when hearing my keynote presentations at various industry conferences. They have also suggested that it is time I got going on a Blog so that they could hear, more often, about my insights into what helps organizations to improve their profits, customer experience and staff engagement. So I have listened and here is my first one.

One of our core practice areas at bia™ includes the coaching and training of project managers and their teams. Often, several months later, they bring us back to help manage a project in crisis and/or one that is in a constant state of fire-fighting. After all of the training and coaching, why are they caught in these costly and stressful situations? There are of course many factors but ultimately we find that two major reasons: not using a continuous risk management process and not conducting regular project health checks and audits.

The risk management process ensures that they proactively identify what might go wrong on their project and what they can do to reduce its likelihood or manage it, should it occur. On-going health checks and project audits (often by a 3rd party such as Business Improvement Architects) ensures that they understand the factors which might be preventing success and identifying the root causes so that the project can be brought back on track. It provides the project manager and team with a list of lessons learned to date.

Your call to action is simple: Understand and use a Risk Management Process and Conduct regular (every 6 months) project health checks. I have free, in-depth articles on these subjects at http://www.bia.ca/articles/UndertakingaSuccessfulProjectAudit.htm and http://www.bia.ca/articles/rm-risk-management.htm

Thanks,

Michael

mstanleigh@bia.ca