Tasks for Portfolio Office >

Register the idea.

At this early point, the idea should be registered on the project tracker so that it can be tracked and also to ensure there is no duplication with other work.

Advise the Project Manager on the tools they should use and where to find help.

Allocate a project management specialist to support the team.

Establish the vision and brief under change control.

Ensure that the programme or project information is loaded into the tracking system.

Assemble the programme information and tasks.  Process the closure.

You may be in a position to take on parts of this work and will certainly need to plan dedicating resources to support the closure activities. You are likely to be the recipient of archived information so will need to be putting arrangements in place to deal with this.

Organise the closure activities and formal review 

You may well be the group that will be asked to lead or support the review you should therefore ensure you have resources available.

Close out documentation and place in archive

You are the probably the only formal role left in place at this stage, and should be taking the lead to ensure that the organisations formal closure procedures and checklists are followed and you are happy to sign off the programme as well. Finally, you should ensure the Post Programme Review is scheduled and put a plan in place to ensure it happens.

Manage project closure.

The Programme/Portfolio Office and support team should lead the review of project closure to ensure that all documentation is up to date, that lessons are recorded and distributed.

The closure should review the effectiveness of the project in achieving objectives and maintaining control of the delivery, the business effectiveness of the change is reviewed as part of the strategic impact assessment.

The Programme/Portfolio Office is responsible for ensuring that the information compliance requirements are met.

Establish the vision under change control

Ensure an audit trail of the input information is maintained.

Any standard tools or templates should be provided. Impact assessment on other programmes by this Blueprint should be tracked by you.

Formalise project changes under change control

You may have a set of criteria that are being used across different projects for this. Projects that are not required may go to a different programme. You should be supporting the Programme Office in establishing appropriate controls around projects up to the organisation's standards.

Formalise project changes under change control and build in new dependencies to existing plans.

You may have a set of criteria that are being used across different projects for this. Cross reference other Programme Plans to check risk aggregation as a result of the project changes and look for cross programme dependencies.  Projects that are not required may go to a different programme. You should be supporting the Programme Office in establishing appropriate controls around projects up to the organisation's standards.

Ensure there is a record of the decision and the justification.

Options should take into account any other changes within the Portfolio and broader business environment. You may have a standard approach to options appraisal that could be relevant to the programme.

Prepare the logistics of the review and any specialists that should be involved.

You should be a independent of the decision process and provide any comments you believe will help the programme groups.

The project dossier should be put under change control at this point.

You may wish to define the level to detail that is required for each project and watch for overlaps with other programmes. There may be templates that you require to be completed as well.

Each element of the governance model should be formally released and under version control.

This is largely Programme Manager territory, but you must feel comfortable that your needs will be met by these arrangements. Your role is a key element of the governance arrangements and each strategy should define how you and your part of the business will contribute. Make sure you understand the role of your Change Team.

Start the reporting and control procedures based on these plans. 

Lessons from other programmes and any standard tools for estimating should be provided to the programme team.

Ensure that the impact of changes are reflected across the governance documentation.

Any business performance data available to support this final validation should be used to understand the impact and risk.

Refresh the Comms Plan and ensure that it deals with the short term launch arrangements.

Mobilisation may mean more pressure on your resources, have you got capacity to deal with this?

Provide support to Project Managers and establish project tracking and controls.

You should ensure that organisational control standards are being deployed to your satisfaction. You may be in a position to help with the provision of resources or skills to support the programme and the project teams.

Track project progress and manage exceptions and dependencies.

Track governance effectiveness and raise issues where needed.

Check business performance.

You have a key role to play in providing assurance and quality reviews of the projects performance and their outputs to ensure the organisation is getting what it pays for and that they are complying with the organisation's standards.

You will be involved with collecting, sifting and analysing the performance data as well as supporting the reporting process. It is important to continually seek to improve the quality of the way this information is communicated. Less can be worth more!

The Programme/Portfolio Office should be checking that the project has achieved its objectives and the business requirements have been delivered, this review will be the trigger to start the closure so all parties should be satisfied with the results.

Provide analysis and data to support the review.

Provide analysis data on governance performance.

Refresh the Comms Plan and ensure that it deals with the short term launch arrangements.

You may need to be part of the review or have access to reviews to enable it to happen. In particular you should be monitoring for overlaps from other initiatives that affect the Blueprint, double counting of benefits or project overlaps.

New organisational standards and lessons from other programmes should be factored into the revisions.

Mobilisation may mean more pressure on your resources if the programme needs help.

Review the removal.

This check is that the legacy approaches have been removed, this could range from the removal of assets, licences or contractors. The removal should assure there are no risks being created and that policy/legal obligations have been met.  There should be checks that service agreements, warranties and guarantees are in place.

Prepare the logistics of the review and any specialists that should be involved

You should be part of the decision process and provide any comments you believe will help the Sponsoring Group.

Monitor progress and potential impact on other projects.

This is mainly a business led activity. The Programme/Portfolio Office may well have seen similar projects where lessons learned could be used.

It is a milestone that will define the project and there is a tendency for this to be rushed to which then results in delays and changes during delivery.

Monitoring the evolving requirements and their impact on other projects is important.

The business requirements should be visible in the shared area and stored as part of the documentation.

There is guidance on developing requirements in P3M Framework that would be helpful.

Support the options review.

Check that plenty of options have been considered and that procurement and other groups are involved, where appropriate.

There may be options to integrate the project in a wider deal with a supplier.

The Project Manager should manage the milestones but there should be adherence to standards and any existing contracts that are in place. 

Review the decision and provide advice.

An audit trail of how this approach was reached should be in place and the conclusions and assumptions tested as part of your scrutiny role.

This information will be required at the end of the stage review.

Although the preferred approach may be agreed, there may be a need to a backup plan to help mitigate risks.

Complete the stage review process.

The result of the review should be recorded with any follow up actions allocated.

The project tracker should be updated and the date for the next stage review entered into the diary.

A health check of project documentation should be undertaken to ensure it is complete and up to date.

Scrutiny and support arrangements should be put into place to monitor the delivery of the project.

Check impact on Business Plans.

There may be changes to the operating model which will impact on the potential for benefits and the Business Plan, either positive or negative. The tracking systems should be updated to reflect this and forecasting adjusted.

There is likely to be a particular impact on resource plans as well.

Check for testing and assurance.

This is a key point as the technical requirements will be part of the procurement and contracting. At this point, acceptance criteria should be set and prioritisation of functionality to enable objective acceptance testing.

Confirm procurement compliance.

There should be an audit trail of the process and checks for compliance so that, if there are any legal challenges, the information will be in place to respond.

Confirmation that suppliers will use and align with the business milestones as part of delivery should be sought.

Complete the stage review process.

The result of the review should be recorded with any follow up actions allocated.

The project tracker should be updated and the date for the next stage review entered into the diary.

A health check of project documentation should be undertaken to ensure it is complete and up to date.

Scrutiny and support arrangements should be put into place to monitor the delivery of the project.

Check for reporting controls.

Where appropriate contracts should include commitments from suppliers to provide monthly progress reporting on progress.

Checks should be made that that appropriate legal assurance has been gained prior to signature.

The project tracker can now be updated and resource projections validated.

The Programme/Portfolio Office should ensure that electronic copies of the documentation are held on the project filing area.

Check dependency status.

The Business Operating Model may have implications for other projects, the Programme/Portfolio Office should therefore cross check that these dependencies are still valid and that any knock on effects are being communicated between the projects and different parts of the business.

This could particularly affect benefits and performance projections.

Assurance of quality plan.

During the capability building the project team should have been testing quality and functionality, this check is to ensure that this has been happening.  If it hasn’t then the level of risk will have increased and additional time will be needed for acceptance testing.

This milestone may last a long time so regular checks of project control and supplier monitoring are required.

Review of compliance.

There should be a compliance review to ensure that there has been robust acceptance testing of the product and the capability. The review should look for evidence that the acceptance criteria have been met and that the project is planning to deal with any outstanding issues.

The commercial implications of the acceptance testing should also be included in the review.

Complete the stage review process.

The result of the review should be recorded with any follow up actions allocated.

The project tracker should be updated and the date for the next stage review entered into the diary.

A health check of project documentation should be undertaken to ensure it is complete and up to date.

Scrutiny and support arrangements should be put into place to monitor the delivery of the project.

Business performance checks undertaken.

This is the last chance to baseline the benefits before going into transition.  The Senior User will check the local operational performance, but assurance that these checks have been done is required and it is a chance to review any other business performance indicators which could be affected unexpectedly.

A final check of the transition plan to new risks should be undertaken.

Check acceptance testing is completed.

At this point the new systems or working practices should be in place, so the assurance should be that the processes are working and that the business is stable using the new way of working. The capability acceptance tests that were undertaken prior to implementation may be worth revisiting to test that it is withstanding operational pressure.

Check business performance.

The Programme/Portfolio Office should be checking that the project has achieved its objectives and the business requirements have been delivered, this review will be the trigger to start the closure so all parties should be satisfied with the results.

Manage project closure.

The Programme/Portfolio Office and support team should lead the review of project closure to ensure that all documentation is up to date, that lessons are recorded and distributed.

The closure should review the effectiveness of the project in achieving objectives and maintaining control of the delivery, the business effectiveness of the change is reviewed as part of the strategic impact assessment.

The Programme/Portfolio Office is responsible for ensuring that the information compliance requirements are met.

Complete the stage review process.

The result of the review should be recorded with any follow up actions allocated.

The project tracker should be updated and the date for the next stage review entered into the diary.

A health check of project documentation should be undertaken to ensure it is complete and up to date.