How we sped up delivery and improved governance at the same time
The Situation
Projects in the Client’s portfolio were often poorly prepared for incremental funding requests, so the rejection rate of these requests was high. Internal Audit had recommended that delays to funding approval and hence delivery needed improvement.
The Objective
To put in place a framework to address the situation, and in doing so reduce costly delivery delays (to revise and resubmit funding requests) at a time when the organisational ability to fund these delays was severely constrained.
The Approach
Working closely with stakeholders, we:
- Reviewed existing processes and PM artefacts, and integrated them into a single, documented process.
- Created a template to simplify check point reviews and assess project readiness to request funding.
- Carried out funding gate reviews using the new template, and in advance identified funding requests that would be rejected or deferred due to lack of information for decision.
- Worked with project managers to improve the quality of their funding requests to the investment decision board – using the completed review template as a guide.
- Created and delivered training to the portfolio office team to enable them to use the new approach.
- Recorded the training to be used after the end of our engagement.
The Outcome
- We increased the proportion of project funding requests being either approved or rejected on their first presentation to the investment decision board, as opposed to being deferred due to lack of information on which to make a decision.
- Consequently, we improved speed of project pipeline management and in-flight project delivery whilst satisfying governance requirements, and reducing unnecessary spend against the organisation’s constrained portfolio budget.
