Imago Business Transformation Limited

	Use the Imago Project Management Model of areas to address in managing any project.
	Keep your projects 'healthy' with independent project audit and assurance.
	Use the UK / European Business Excellence Model to continuously improve your business.
	Do you spend a lot of your time in meetings? There's a better way with Computer Assisted Meetings.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Are you satisfied that you have a systematic approach to each area of the model below?

Test drive the Imago Guide to Project Management which expands on the above model and is available as a hypertext file which can be installed on an intranet, a local area network or a PC. For details, or advice, send an e-mail to project@ibt.co.uk.

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Project Audit and Assurance

We carry out the following types of audit:

1. Start-up audit. This reviews the business justification for the project, and how the project is positioned in the business. We check that there is consensus of the stakeholders, and that there is commitment to achieving the benefits. We check that the risks are identified and assessed, and that there is an implementation approach which will ensure that the risks are managed. We also check that when the investment decision has been made, a meeting of the key people (stakeholders plus project manager) will be convened to define the project (see Project Definition in the Imago Guide to Project Management).
2. Project Assurance. This is a regular review (e.g. monthly) to give confidence to the project sponsor and project board that the project is going well and has the best chance of success. This audit is carried out by interviews and reviews of key documents. We aim to look at the project from several different perspectives by interviewing people who have an interest or involvement in this phase of the project - e.g. business managers, users, project managers etc. We check on the development and maintenance of plans, progress against plans, how the project is reported, how risks are being assessed and managed, how good is the communication and collaboration within the project team, and between the project team and the business or environment. We also look at how much pressure for change there is, and how change is controlled. We try to use the information collected to anticipate future problems for the project, and to assess whether there needs to be any adjustment to the project now to ensure future problems can be dealt with effectively.
3. Project 'Health Check'. This is an audit which can be done at any stage of a project. It is usually done where the Project Board or Sponsor has some worry that the project may not be successful, and wants an external audit to confirm the 'health' of the project, to identify any problems, and to produce recommendations for improvement. This audit may involve reviews of the technical viability, the effectiveness of the project management approach, and the external relationships of the project. A specific audit plan would be developed, relevant to the stage of the project. Often, when this type of audit is requested, things have already started to go wrong, and one of the outcomes of the audit is the recommendation of a recovery strategy.
4. Project Completion Audit. This is carried out at the point when the project claims to have met all its deliverable objectives and completion criteria. The purpose of the audit is to ensure that project expenditure has finished and is fully accounted for, that the project team is disbanded or re-deployed, that benefit management responsibility is accepted where appropriate and that operational responsibilities have been effectively assumed within the business. If a project completion review has been held, much of the above will have been addressed, and the audit will only need to validate the output of the completion review.
5. Post Project Reviews. For an organisation to become competent at managing projects, it is necessary to capture ‘best practice’ from completed projects and embed this into the organisational memory in the form of processes, standards, guidelines, mechanisms etc. Ideally, some of this is captured during the project, but to maximise the organisational learning, a number of post project reviews should be held with appropriate groups of people. For example, there may be a need for reviews on ‘user requirements definition and design’, ‘managing changes to project scope’, ‘risk identification & management’, ‘project planning & estimating’, ‘project communication and reporting’, ‘managing the IT testing stage’, ‘benefit realisation planning’ etc. These reviews are most productively carried out using electronic meeting tools which provide anonymity and require a shorter time commitment from the participants. The output from these reviews should be action plans to ensure that organisational learning takes place effectively to the benefit of all future projects.

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TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Could you self assess your business unit in each of criteria shown in the model below?

Each of the criteria breaks down into a number of parts. In each of these, you assess your strengths and areas for improvement, and you then score them so that you can compare from year to year on an internationally recognised scale of excellence which is also the basis for the UK and European Quality Awards.

Cross functional improvement teams may be formed to produce recommendations in each 'area for improvement. The recommendations may then be prioritised along with other initiatives and incorporated in business plans.

For information on consultancy and training in self assessment, continuous improvement and total quality management, send an e-mail to quality@ibt.co.uk

For general information about the UK Quality Award, Self Assessment and other interesting Total Quality information, visit the British Quality Foundation site.

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COMPUTER ASSISTED MEETINGS

How much time do you spend in meetings? Typically, over 30% of the time spent on a business or IT project is spent in meetings. And it's not only projects of course; there are Board meetings, strategy and planning meetings, risk assessment meetings, quality improvement meetings and more. So how do we improve meeting productivity?

Meetings can be structured and with a good facilitator can be more effective and productive, but the real breakthrough has been with computer assisted meetings. By providing each participant with a laptop computer, linked on a network, and with special software, dramatic increases in effectiveness and productivity can be achieved. The software provides tools and linkage for common meeting activities such as 'brainstorming', 'categorizing' and 'voting or evaluating', as well as providing documentation right after the meeting - no more tedious transcribing of flip-charts!

We have eight years of experience running computer assisted meetings in a meeting room using GroupSystems ®. We are now pioneering new ways of running meetings with participants in different places and even participating at different times. This has been made possible through new ways of exploiting the Internet and Intranets.

If you would like to explore the possibilities of computer assisted or web-based meetings please send an e-mail to meetings@ibt.co.uk.

GroupSystems is a trade mark of Ventana Corporation.

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