Post Implementation Review
A necessary last step toward ensuring project success is a post-implementation review (PIR). These reviews enable management to confirm the benefits of the project by evaluating whether the objectives have been achieved and help identify areas that may need additional attention.
PIRs provide an opportunity for accumulating lessons learned and identifying best practices that can be applied to future project initiatives. SUMS Consulting undertakes PIRs across areas, for example:
- Information systems implementation
- Process change initiatives
- Organisational change.
A PIR for an information systems implementation can include an assessment of some (or all) of the following aspects of the work:
- Original project initiation documents and business case
- Governance structure effectiveness
- Project management framework and standards
- Tools and techniques applied
- User acceptance testing standards
- Change management standards
- Issues that arose during the project and the reasons for them
- Extent to which objectives have been achieved
- Benefits achieved against objectives set
- Lessons learnt.
The assessments can include a comparison with recognised good practice standards and the application of templates.
PIRs invariably identify opportunities to enhance a members implementation capabilities and standards.
Lesley Reed