ACCA SBL Syllabus H. Innovation, Performance Excellence & Change Management - Concluding a Project - Notes ^{12 / 12}

Post Project Review

• A post-project review takes place once the project has been completed.

  In fact, it can often be the last stage of the project,  with the review culminating in the sign-off of the project and the formal dissolution of the project team.

  The focus of the post-project review is on the conduct of the project itself , not the product it has delivered.

  The aim is to identify and understand what went well and what went badly in the project and to feed lessons learned back into the project management standards with the aim of improving subsequent project management in the organisation.

This involves:

1. Acceptance by client

2. Review of outputs (against goals)

3. Disbanding the team

4. Performance review

5. Lessons learnt

6. Formal closure by the steering committee

Post Implementation Review

A post-implementation review focuses on the product delivered by the project.

It usually takes place a specified time after the product has been delivered. 

This allows the actual users of the product an opportunity to use and experience the product or service and to feedback their observations into a formal review.

The post-implementation review will focus on the product’s fitness for purpose . 

The review will not only discuss strategies for fixing or addressing identified faults, but it will also make recommendations on how to avoid these faults in the future.

• This involves:

  1. Gap analysis on business case objectives

  2. Costs / benefits v forecasts

  3. Other benefits realised

  4. Effectiveness of new business operations

  5. Stakeholder satisfaction

  6. PIRs are on-going to ensure benefits are managed and realised (PPR is a one -off with a lessons learnt goal)

  7. PIR objective is to ensure maximum benefit is obtained from the product of the project (PPR focuses on the project itself)

Benefits Realisation Review

To see if the benefits claimed at evaluation stage are subsequently realised.

It is concerned with establishing whether the predicted benefits in the business case have been realised once the product or service delivered by the project has been in place for some time. 

It compares actual costs and benefits with those predicted in the business case

A benefits realisation review also takes place after the product has been delivered .

It revisits the business case to see if the costs predicted at the initiation of the project were accurate and that the predicted benefits have actually accrued. 

In effect, it is a review of the initial cost/benefit analysis and any subsequent updates made to this analysis during the conduct of the project.

It may be part of a post-implementation review , although the long-term nature of most benefits means that the post-implementation review is often held too soon to properly conduct benefits realisation.

In fact, it can be argued that benefits realisation is actually a series of reviews where the predicted long-term costs and benefits of the business case are monitored .

Again, one of the objectives is to identify lessons learned and in this case to feed these back into the benefits management process of the organisation.

• It includes:

  1. Seeing which benefits have been achieved (and which haven’t)

  2. Identify any unexpected benefits and weaknesses

  3. Understand reasons for the above

  4. Understand how to improve the management process

• Thus it forces the sponsor to define the nature, timing and value of each benefit

Project Management Software

This software to help plan and control of the project

• The software package needs four items of information:

  • How long each activity lasts

  • Are any of the activities dependent on each other (does one have to be done after another etc)

  • What resources (and when they) are available

• It can be used for Planning, Estimating, Monitoring and Reporting

• Planning	Estimating	Monitoring	Reporting
  Create diagrams of the system	Create alternative resource allocations	Allow all project members access to real time info	Gives access to all members
  Create Gantt charts etc	Create budgets	A database for all	Can create end of stage reports
  	Allocate timings to different project sections	Automatic comaprisons to plan

• Advantages:

  1. Improved planning and control

  2. Improved communication

  3. Improved quality of systems developed

• Miscellaneous points

  When choosing..

  • Look at all software which is within budget and has the essential functions

  • Trial them if possible

  • Get them installed and get training on them