WRITTEN ON February 23rd, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement

Here’s the 2003 state of the art guidance on all this stuf from OGC. In brief, the NAO/OGC warning signs for senior management on common causes of project failure are

1. Lack of clear link between the project and the organisation’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.

2. Lack of clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and leadership.

3. Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders.

4. Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management.

5. Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps.

6. Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits).

7. Lack of understanding of and contact with the supply industry at senior levels in the organisation.

8. Lack of effective project team integration between clients, the supplier team and the supply chain.

If any of the answers to the above questions are unsatisfactory, an acquisition-based project should not be allowed to proceed until the appropriate
assurances are obtained.

See expanded version below.

Then there’s a positive expression of how to manage partnerships:

Top Management (Permanent Secretaries, Executive Agency and NDPB CEOs) must perceptibly create an atmosphere that encourages innovation and dispels fears about trying new approaches. To encourage a sense of mutual trust, they must ensure that the partners.

• support open and frank exchanges
• pool experience and expertise
• encourage open book accounting
• establish a joint structure to provide effective management
• promote a ‘win-win’ mentality
• enter two-way review process

The larger the contract, the greater must be the involvement of senior management. A senior official should be appointed to take responsibility for the contracts management and care should be taken to ensure that the project is fully resourced, especially in terms of the quality and number of personnel deployed. Managers, on both sides, need to be capable of demonstrating behaviours that reinforce the relationship.

(I always love “care should be taken”. Using the passive tense strikes me as a way to avoid clearly stating who does what. But maybe I’m nitpicking something that is too theoretical anyway)

Then it sets out theIt goes on

Gateway to success

New procurement projects in civil Central Government are subject to OGC Gateway™ Reviews.

What? Gateway is ™ ?? But Cabinet Office called its Microsoft portal Gateway! OGC should have sued!!

The process applies equally for those organisations that already have strategic partnering arrangements in place.The OGC Gateway Process examines a project at critical stages in its lifecycle to provide assurance that it can progress successfully to the next stage. It is designed to be applied to projects that procure services, construction/property, IT-enabled business change projects and procurements utilising framework contracts.

There’s a definition of value for money:

Value for money (VfM) is defined as “the optimum combination of whole-life cost and quality (or fitness for purpose) to meet the user’s requirement”. This is rarely synonymous with lowest price.

And it describes good partnering relations:

Partnering is where two, or more, organisations develop a close and, generally, long-term working relationship. The principle being that a cooperative relationship is better than an adversarial one. A partnering relationship works because both parties derive mutual benefits from the arrangement and so have an interest in each other’s success. For legal reasons ‘partnering relationship’ has become widely preferred to ‘partnership’. The words may be different but the philosophy is the same.

…and finally it talks about

improving the efficiency and effectiveness of procurement to achieve faster delivery

It is a common complaint that government procurement takes too long and people ask why doesn’t the government do something about it? Everybody benefits from fast, effective and transparent procurement. It reduces suppliers’ costs, enables departments to fulfil commitments faster, and more effectively and gives citizens more responsive and better value for money (VFM) public services.

1. Lack of clear link between the project and the organisation’s key
strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.
• Do we know how the priority of this project compares and aligns with our
other delivery and operational activities?
• Have we defined the critical success factors (CSFs) for the project?
• Have the CSFs been agreed with suppliers and key stakeholders?
• Do we have a clear project plan that covers the full period of the planned
delivery and all business change required, and indicates the means of
benefits realisation?
• Is the project founded upon realistic timescales, taking account of statutory
lead times, and showing critical dependencies such that any delays can be
handled?
• Are the lessons learnt from relevant projects being applied?
• Has an analysis been undertaken of the effects of any slippage in time, cost,
scope or quality? In the event of a problem/conflict at least one must be
sacrificed.
2.
Lack of clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and
leadership.
• Does the project management team have a clear view of the
interdependencies between projects, the benefits, and the criteria against
which success will be judged?
• If the project traverses organisational boundaries, are there clear governance
arrangements to ensure sustainable alignment with the business objectives
of all organisations involved?
• Are all proposed commitments and announcements first checked for delivery
implications?
• Are decisions taken early, decisively, and adhered to, in order to facilitate
successful delivery?
• Does the project have the necessary approval to proceed from its nominated
Minister either directly or through delegated authority to a designated SRO?
• Does the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) have the ability, responsibility
and authority to ensure that the business change and business benefits are
delivered?
• Does the SRO have a suitable track record of delivery? Where necessary, is
this being optimised through training?
3.
Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders.
• Have we identified the right stakeholders?
• In so doing, have we as intelligent customers, identified the rationale for
doing so (e.g. the why, the what, the who, the where, the when and the
how)?
• Have we secured a common understanding and agreement of stakeholder
requirements?
• Does the business case take account of the views of all stakeholders
including users?
• Do we understand how we will manage stakeholders e.g. ensure buy-in,
overcome resistance to change, allocate risk to the party best able to
manage it?
• Has sufficient account been taken of the subsisting organisational culture?
• Whilst ensuring that there is clear accountability, how can we resolve any
conflicting priorities?
4.
Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and
risk management.
• Is there a skilled and experienced project team with clearly defined roles and
responsibilities? If not, is there access to expertise, which can benefit those
fulfilling the requisite roles?
• Are the major risks identified, weighted and treated by the SRO, the Director,
and Project Manager and/or project team?
• Has sufficient resourcing, financial and otherwise, been allocated to the
project, including an allowance for risk?
• Do we have adequate approaches for estimating, monitoring and controlling
the total expenditure on projects?
• Do we have effective systems for measuring and tracking the realisation of
benefits in the business case?
• Are the governance arrangements robust enough to ensure that “bad news”
is not filtered out of progress reports to senior managers?
• If external consultants are used, are they accountable and committed to help
ensure successful and timely delivery?
5.
Too little attention to breaking development and implementation
into manageable steps.
• Has the approach been tested to ensure it is not ‘big-bang’ for example in IT-
enabled projects?
• Has sufficient time been built in to allow for planning applications in Property
& Construction projects for example?
• Have we done our best to keep delivery timescales short so that change
during development is avoided?
• Have enough review points been built in so that the project can be stopped, if
changing circumstances mean that the business benefits are no longer
achievable or no longer represent value for money?
• Is there a business continuity plan in the event of the project delivering late or
failing to deliver at all?
6.
Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-
term value for money (especially securing delivery of business
benefits).
• Is the evaluation based on whole-life value for money, taking account of
capital, maintenance and service costs?
• Do we have a proposed evaluation approach that allows us to balance
financial factors against quality and security of delivery?
• Does the evaluation approach take account of business criticality and
affordability?
• Is the evaluation approach business driven?
7.
Lack of understanding of and contact with the supply industry at
senior levels in the organisation.
• Have we tested that the supply industry understands our approach and
agrees that it is achievable?
• Have we asked suppliers to state any assumptions they are making against
their proposals?
• Have we checked that the project will attract sufficient competitive interest?
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• Are senior management sufficiently engaged with the industry to be able
assess supply-side risks?
• Do we have a clear strategy for engaging with the industry or are we making
sourcing decisions on a piecemeal basis?
• Are the processes in place to ensure that all parties have a clear
understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and a shared understanding
of desired outcomes, key terms and deadlines?
•
Do we understand the dynamics of industry to determine whether our
acquisition requirements can be met given potentially competing pressures in
other sectors of the economy?
8. Lack of effective project team integration between clients, the supplier
team and the supply chain.
• Has a market evaluation been undertaken to test market responsiveness to
the requirements being sought?
• Are the procurement routes that allow integration of the project team being
used?
• Is there early supplier involvement to help determine and validate what
outputs and outcomes are sought for the project?
• Has a shared risk register been established?
• Have arrangements for sharing efficiency gains throughout the supply team
been established?