Artizen Project Health Assessment - How to conduct one properly.

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Programs and Projects
Independent Project Health Assessment

The Artizen Perspective
How to conduct an independent
health assessment.
 Define your objectives
 Prepare for interpersonal dynamics
 Choose your review format
 Pick your evaluators carefully
 Personal preference vs „best practices‟
 Optimize your evaluation criteria
 Define the output format
 Decide who will see the output
 Decide if results affect performance appraisals
 Define review timing
 Key takeaways

If you really just want to do an assessment of one project,
you should have Artizen conduct the assessment. They
cost less than $10,000 and will be done in 3 weeks.
First, it is not very practical to decide you want to do an
assessment on only one project. This should be a
process you wish to implement continually because there
is a significant investment required to define your health
assessment goals and procedures. It will likely take more
time than you want.
When to Proceed
The balance of this white paper addresses organizations
who wish to implement a health assessment methodology.

 Do you want a toolkit you can use only when you want to
troubleshoot projects that you suspect or know are in
trouble?
 Are you doing health assessments to identify project mgt
problems by individual PM or across the org to make
improvements in PM performance?
 Are you implementing metrics with a goal of taking a PM
team from good to great?
What are your health assessment goals?
Define Your Objectives

 The response from a project manager whose project is being
reviewed can be anywhere from cooperative and constructive to
threatened, scared and defensive.
 Be prepared to manage a defensive PM. Try to put them at ease. If
things get too uncomfortable, regroup and reschedule. When you
meet again, try to move their posture from defensive to a positive,
constructive discussion before you proceed.
Be prepared for the interpersonal dynamics
of a health assessment
Managing Personal Dynamics

1. It is perceived as fair if everyone will be on the
“hot seat” when it is their turn
2. The reviewers, as a group, learn from results of
other PM‟s review, not just from the results of
their review
The PM is evaluated by a group of their peers.
Choosing Review Format
Peer Review
The advantages to this are:

1. The health assessment process consumes less
team bandwidth
2. It is usually easier to handle conflict and avoid
confrontational reviews
3. PM‟s are more likely to open up, ask for advice in
a 1:1 setting
The PM is evaluated by a reviewer who has seniority.
Seniority Review

1. The health assessment process consumes less
team bandwidth
2. It is usually easier to handle conflict and avoid
confrontational reviews
The PM is evaluated in a face to face Q&A format with
project artifacts such as project plans, requirements
documents, issue lists, etc.
Face to Face Review
Perhaps the most typical

You could do an off line only review, but we find the
back and forth discussion is where most of the
deep insights are found and where the PM gets the
most from the review.
Off Line Only Review

 In a 1:1 senior review format, the evaluator should be a
senior PM recognized as experienced and
knowledgeable. Alternatively, the evaluator could be up
the organizational hierarchy or be an outside consultant.
You just don‟t want the PM thinking, “This is stupid, I
know more than this guy”.
 In a peer review process, they should be the most
immediate group close to the PM, the people he or she
works with.
 You want all of the evaluators to be able to take a
sensitive approach. Do not select someone who may be
aggressive or confrontational.
It‟s important to choose your review
evaluators carefully.
Choosing Review Evaluators

Reviewers must know the difference between:
Choosing Review Evaluators
Their personal preferences
on how to manage aspects of a project
The generally accepted “best practices”
that should be followed on
most engagements.

 Key dimensions of project management
(sponsorship/stakeholder mgt, project planning, status
reporting, issue & risk mgt, etc.)
 Results metrics (on time delivery, on budget
delivery, benefits realization)
Invest significant time in defining your evaluation criteria
and the review questions you will use to probe performance
against those criteria.
Defining Evaluation Criteria
Get Your Criteria Right
Typical criteria are:
We recommend forming a dedicated committee to do this.

This is an example dashboard and a set of
recommendations like those used by Artizen.
Define Your Output Format

 If a PM thinks his scores on the dashboard will be seen by his
manager, VP, or the CIO, then you raise the tension levels in project
reviews
 Sometimes we agree that the output is confidential between the
reviewer and the PM.
Define who will see the output
(This can be a much trickier question than you might think)
 Get all of this figured out before you start. The PM will ask you within
the first 10 minutes, we guarantee it.
In these situations we might agree with the PM’s that anonymous
results will be reported to managers and executives across a group of
projects. A word of caution here, if you make that commitment to the
PM’s you need the execs bought in. The first question you will get is,
which project has all the red scores on the dashboard. If you said
you would not tell, you have to be prepared to stick to it.

 We believe health assessments should be a constructive
process. So in general, we do not recommend a direct
linkage to performance appraisals.
 If you are, for some reason, not getting the
improvements you expect from health assessments, then
linkage to performance may be appropriate.
 We have not seen clients make this linkage.
Decide if review results will
impact performance appraisals
Define Impact of Review Results

Define the timing when reviews will
be conducted
Define Timing for Reviews
Typically, reviews are conducted prior to major
phase gates
If you do not have bandwidth to review all projects,
define criteria for which projects will be reviewed
 Project size is the most common criteria (e.g.
review all projects with budget above $500,000)
 For organizational development reasons, you
may choose to schedule reviews to provide
coverage across all PM‟s (each PM is reviewed
at least once per year).

Key Takeaways
How well you define your objectives, criteria and process will
determine your success
Choosing your evaluators and review format to match your
specific situation is key
Generating clear, thorough output and defining how it will be
used is essential.

Web: www.artizen.com
Email: Acroft@artizen.com
Phone: 650-261-9400
Independent Program Health Assessment
Artizen can help.
Artizen specializes in large program management—
it‟s what we do, and it‟s all we do.
Because we offer a deeper expertise, we’ve helped
Cisco, McAfee, NetApp and other premier clients for years.
Get it touch to learn what we can do for you.

Artizen Project Health Assessment - How to conduct one properly.

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