Act on Lessons Learned

If you don't use PIAs to identify ways to improve project management, you're not realising their full value. Sun Life Financial's Esposito says project team members who served on the audit and implementation teams hold a meeting during the PIA process to discuss what went well and what went wrong both during the implementation and the audit, and to identify areas for improvement.

To ensure that people take these lessons to heart, Sun Life Financial posts them on the corporate intranet and submits to senior management a summary of findings from PIAs of all projects done during the course of the year. Esposito also makes changes to project management and implementation processes if a project's PIA indicates that changes are warranted.

Sun Life Financial annually reviews the audits of different projects to identify common areas that need improvement. Gartner's Gomolski says it's important to do this type of project-to-project comparison. "The real value," she says, "is in seeing some of the patterns. For example, 'We screw up every time we do an integration project. What does that mean?' Or, 'Every time we do a project with this business unit, we suffer from amazing scope creep because they don't really know what they want, so maybe we have to work with them differently.'"

SIDEBAR: Sustain the Momentum

Now that you're armed with convincing arguments on the importance of PIAs and success factors for pulling them off, making them a sustained practice in your organisation should look less daunting.

"If you have the project's objectives, approach, how it's going to be organised, how the business areas are involved in the project, the expected costs, and the anticipated hard and soft benefits well-defined up front, and you manage change along the way, then when you come in to do the post-project audit, there are no surprises," says Esposito.

Not only do PIAs go smoother when you've done all the hard work on the front end, but you increase your odds of actualising the system's value. "By getting a better understanding of project costs up front," says Higgins, "you'll be more likely to hit the ROI you're trying to meet."

Eight Steps for a Successful PIA

• Long before the post-implementation audit (PIA) begins, write up a clear business case that delineates and breaks down the cost of the project, the soft and hard benefits, the expected ROI, and when the ROI will be fully achieved.
• Keep scrupulous records of all the changes that are made to the system and to the project plan during the implementation. A Web-based version control or collaboration tool can make this easier.
• Identify the members of the audit team.
• Schedule a kick-off PIA meeting to identify all the logistics that need to take place to perform the audit.
• Review the business case, the initial scope of work and all the change orders. Around the same time, schedule interviews with users or send out satisfaction surveys. Also survey implementation team members to find out how well they think the various project objectives were met. Test the system and its controls. Examine the quality of the data. Take a sample of the transactions to make sure they're being processed the way they should. Engage the finance department to conduct its review of the system's pay-off.
• Compare audit findings with the business case to see if you hit your target.
• Gather lessons learned. Identify what went well, what didn't and why. Determine how you can address what didn't go well in future implementations.
• Perform follow-up reviews, if necessary.