Ensuring projects deliver the value expected of them

Introducing formal Programme Governance at HMRC

In today’s fast-changing business economy, effective management of IT-related programmes and projects has emerged as a vital corporate responsibility. Businesses now evolve so rapidly that the original assumptions on which a project was based can change dramatically. With the use of technology a vital aspect of almost all businesses, the ability to maintain tight executive control of projects throughout their lifecycle has become an essential business life-skill.

Effective IT project governance, then, is important because in today’s business world of global information, a well managed and executed IT function becomes fundamental to the continued existence of almost any organisation. Effective IT project governance is all about ensuring that projects deliver the value expected of them – and, crucially, it is important that no business critical or large scale project should ever be managed on a standalone basis.

A well-developed approach to project governance is also essential in involving and securing buy-in from disparate functions across an organisation. Like successful project management, good programme and portfolio governance is about how the programme or portfolio will manage risks, stakeholders, resources and quality, but focuses on achieving the benefits - the reasons for undertaking the programme or portfolio in the first place. In order to form a cohesive approach, organisations need to understand how all these aspects inter-relate.

It’s particularly difficult to achieve a co-ordinated approach between lots of parallel initiatives in the face of major organisational change. This was certainly the case when the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise merged: as each organisation had its own arrangements for programme and project governance, as well as its own set of existing programmes and projects, a decision was taken initially to base future governance on the system already in use within the Inland Revenue. However, the process model used was based on a ‘technical’ approach to governance which might be acceptable in instances where change is being driven by the technical environment, but is less useful where the agenda for change is being set by the business. As a result, business project managers frequently did not fully understand the complexity of technical products required to manage a project or programme through from inception to implementation. The answer, at least within the Customs Directorate, has been to separate the business and technical aspects of managing a project with a well-defined interface between the two.

It was to address these difficulties that Methods Consulting was engaged to introduce more robust and formalised governance into the UK-wide Customs Service Transformation Programme (CSTP). When we started the assignment, our first task was to undertake a high-level health check of the programme and the existing projects. By conducting interviews with individual Project Managers, we were able to understand how they were managing their projects, complete a detailed review of their project plans, and determine their level of skill and competence in project management. Similar discussions were held with members of the Programme Management Office to determine the level of control being exercised over the programme.

Once this initial information had been ascertained, Methods undertook an in-depth review of the existing departmental and HMRC governance framework lifecycle process models, developing and agreeing a new, more appropriate governance model. This ensured that the split of responsibilities between the business and IT was well-defined, understood, and appropriate for the task in hand. The process model covers the entire business lifecycle, from initial inception, through viability and definition phases, into development and implementation - ensuring that the final deliverables are revisited and evaluated through a post implementation review.

The model is based on existing HMRC and Prince 2 lifecycle models, but also takes into account the need for OGC Gateway reviews and professional best practice. It also ensures proper project and programme governance by effectively treating it as a separate phase within the lifecycle, with its own set of deliverables. The lifecycle process model is also supported by a complete Deliverables Register and a RACI checklist denoting who is Responsible, Accountable, needs to be Consulted and Informed for each deliverable required. In the future, a complete set of templates for all deliverables will be available: some are available now and others are being added as needed.

Having developed the new lifecycle process model, Methods then developed a full set of MS Project templates covering the full lifecycle, individual phases, and combinations of phases. These templates are fully compliant with the new lifecycle model, contain the full set of generic deliverables and RACI checklists, and provide views and filters of the plans to enable them to be used easily and consistently. Within the templates, additional tasks and activities can be added as needed, and generic tasks and deliverables that are not required by a particular project can be ‘disabled’ so that they have no effect on the business project plan.

Following creation of the templates, we are now putting them to use, working with all Business Project Managers and the Programme Management Office to develop consistent plans for each project. We are also developing the overall programme plan, and a high-level diagrammatic representation of the programme. All Business Project Managers have undertaken relevant training in the use of MS Project to create and maintain project plans, and we are further supporting this by running ad-hoc workshop sessions for both project managers and the PMO in the use of the new lifecycle model, project and programme management and the new templates.

The result of the work has been the introduction of a more formal methodology to project and programme control and project plans that are consistent and easy to follow, leading to a more tightly controlled programme that is set to deliver the changes required to meet European legislation and further improve the security of Britain’s borders. You could say that the CSTP Programme is now shipshape!

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