- Kable, Monday 29 June 2009 13.07 BST
It has published the latest in a series of Lessons Learned documents on key themes and issues identified from the Gateway Reviews of major public sector projects.
Lessons Learned – Effective Project Assurance explores how to provide effective project assurance to help manage risk and improve confidence among the management team and stakeholders.
It points to six findings that it says can help in the successful delivery of a project:
- all projects should have their own assurance plan;
- the right assurance tool should be used at the right time, provided by appropriately skilled and experienced assurers;
- start the assurance early, and consider using Starting Gate (an independent peer review before delivery begins);
- organisations should develop and declare a policy setting out when and to whom assurance should be circulated;
- share and learn from others;
- act on the recommendations and use circulation and escalation procedures where appropriate.
Nigel Smith, chief executive of the OGC, said: "Gateway Reviews have already proven to be a valuable addition to the government's checks on whether a programme or project is on the right path to deliver a successful outcome. It is important best practice learnt from them is shared across Whitehall.
"The Lessons Learned publications provide a useful additional measure to support programme and project managers with guidance on how to do the right things, in the right way, with the right resource, and minimise the risk of failure."
