Project Audit & Review Checklist

The following provides a detailed checklist to assist the PPO with reviewing the health of a project:

No List of activities Yes / No comments

1 Project Planning
1.1 Does the project have a formal Project Plan?
1.2 Are the key elements of a Project Plan present?
a. Project Definition & Scope?
b. Project Objectives?
c. Cost / Benefit Analysis?
d. Staffing Requirements?
e. Time Line?
f. Risk Analysis?
1.3 Have all stakeholders been identified?
1.4 Is a Stakeholder Management plan in place?
Have project accountabilities & responsibilities
been clearly defined?
1.5 Have the scope, objectives, costs, benefits and
impacts been communicated to all involved
and/or impacted stakeholders and work
groups?
1.6 a) Have all involved stakeholders and work
groups committed to the project?
b) Have all necessary approvals been obtained?
1.7 Has a project Communications Plan been
developed?
1.8 Are funding and staffing resource estimates
sufficiently detailed and documented for use in
planning and tracking the project?
1.9 Does a documented project organizational
policy & plan (i.e. governance model) exist?
1.10 Have adequate resources been provided by
 management to ensure project success?
1.11 Is current scope of the project substantially
different than that originally defined in the
approved project plan?
1.12 Has the approach and development strategy of
the project been defined, documented and
accepted by the appropriate stakeholders?
1.13 Have project management standards and
procedures been established and documented?
1.14 Is there a Steering Committee in place?
1.15 Is the Steering Committee active in project
oversight?
1.16 Are there procedures in place to effectively
manage interdependencies with other
projects / systems?
2 Project Management
2.1 Have the key elements of a coherent project
management strategy been established?
a. Project tracking plan & methodology
b. Project status reporting structure & process
c. Change Management plan & tracking
d. Issues Management process & tracking plan
e. Risk Management Plan
f. Software Quality Assurance
g. Software Configuration Management
2.2 Project Scheduling & Tracking
2.2.1 Has a structured approach been used to break
work effort into manageable components?
2.2.2 Are team members involved in the
development of activity & task decomposition?
2.2.3 Are individual tasks of reasonable duration (8–
40 hrs)?
2.2.4 Are milestone deliverables effectively tracked
and compared to project plan?
2.2.5 Does the detailed project plan identify
individual responsibilities for the next 4–6
weeks?
2.2.6 Have activity relationships and
interdependencies within tasks been
adequately identified?
2.2.7 Are target dates established for each milestone
deliverable?
2.2.8 Are corrective actions taken when actual
results are substantially different from detailed
project plan? Describe.
2.2.8 Are changes in deliverable commitments
agreed to by all affected groups & individuals?
2.2.9 Is the organization structure for both tracking
& controlling project activities work products &
costs (effort, schedule & budget) well defined
and assigned to a specific individual?
2.2.10 Are measurements and feedback mechanisms
incorporated in tracking work effort & refining
work estimating techniques?
2.2.11 Have procedures for identifying variances from
estimates & adjusting the detailed work
program been established?
2.2.12 Is project work proceeding in accordance with
the original project schedule?
2.2.13 Is project work proceeding in accordance with
the original project schedule?
2.2.14 If not, have all project delays been adequately
accounted for, communicated to all
stakeholders and adjustments made in overall
 project schedule?
2.2.15 Is there general agreement & acceptance of
the current status and progress of the project?
2.2.16 Is PERT / Critical Path or equivalent
methodology being used? Can you see the
critical path on the plan?
2.2.17 Is an industry recognized mechanized support
tool(s) being used for project scheduling &
tracking?
2.2.18 Is it possible to track all classes of project work
(e.g. scheduled, un-scheduled, defect repair,
etc.)? Can you compare work done to the
baseline?
2.3 Project Status Reporting
2.3.1 Is project status reviewed with senior
management at appropriate intervals? What
are they?
a. Overall status
b. Project performance (achievements &
milestones)
c. Open issues
d. Risks
e. Action items
f. Cost & time performance against plan
g. Quality metrics
h. Beneficiaries involvement
2.3.2 Are internal project status meetings held at
reasonable intervals?
2.3.3 Are sub-project reviews held at reasonable
intervals?
2.3.4 Have adequate procedures been put in place
for project coordination and status reporting
 across project boundaries (i.e. interdependent
software development among interfacing
systems)?
2.3.5 Do project teams & team members report on
status / activities / progress?
2.4 Project Estimating
2.4.1 Are multiple estimation methods being
employed?
2.4.2 Are current project time & resource estimates
reasonable based on the current project stage?
2.4.3 Are actuals compared against estimates to
analyze and correct variances?
2.4.4 Are project team members involved in detailed
estimating and scheduling?
2.5 Risk Management
2.5.1 Was an original risk assessment completed?
2.5.2 Is there a process in place to monitor project
risks?
2.5.3 Has provision been made to reassess project
risks at various project stages?
2.5.4 Have all unresolved risks been documented?
Have all unimplemented risk strategies been
escalated to an issues log?
3 Quality Management
3.1 Does the project have a ‘Quality Culture’?
3.2 Is there a Quality Plan covering all Policies,
Guidelines and Procedures?
3.3 Quality Assurance
3.3.1 Has an overall Quality Assurance Plan been
developed for the project?
3.3.2 Does the plan address key project elements?
a. Project Planning?
 b. Project Management?
3.3.3 Is there a set of procedures defining the scope,
procedures and deliverables defining Quality
Control?
3.4 Are quality indicators and metrics defined?

3.5 Is there a set of procedures to capture, analyze

and act on quality metrics?
3.6 Software Configuration Management
(SCM)
3.6.1 Has SCM been implemented for this project?
3.6.2 Has an industry recognized SCM software
version management & control tool been
implemented?
3.6.3 Is SCM version management and control
effectively linked with the testing function to
ensure integration and regression testing have
been performed?
3.6.4 Has an automated Change Management tool
been implemented?
3.6.5 Is the SCM function adequately staffed?
3.6.6 Is the Testing Coordination function separate
from the development staff?
4 Management Procedures
4.1 Partnership Management
4.1.1 Is there a formal set of procedures (for status
reporting, contract negotiation & review,
time/invoice reconciliation, etc.) supporting
Partnership Management?
4.2 Issues Management
4.2.1 Is there a formal set of procedures supporting
Issues Management?
4.2.2 Is there any form of automated support for
 Issues Management?
4.2.3 Are issues raised, assessed, actioned, and
resolved in a timely and efficient manner?
4.3 Stakeholder Management
4.3.1 Is there a formal set of procedures supporting
Stakeholder Management?
4.3.2 Is it standard practice to formally commit
stakeholders to the project via agreements?
4.3.3 Does a comprehensive set of Stakeholder
Agreements exist? Do we have statements
delineating what each stakeholder has agreed
to do?
5 Resourcing
5.1 Are all resource assumptions documented?
5.2 Does the project team have the skills necessary
to successfully complete current project(s) and
support the application?
5.3 Have arrangements been made to obtain
special expertise or competence by consulting
or referencing:
a. Similar projects?
b. Published materials?
c. Personnel with expertise?
d. Outside experts?
5.4 Have the personnel with the necessary skills
and competence been identified and has
agreement for their participation in the project
been reached with the appropriate
management?
5.5 Is there a project organization chart showing
the reporting relationships and responsibilities
for each position?
5.6 Has a proper project work location been
established that will allow the team to work
together with user personnel?
5.7 Does the detailed work plan match the
complexity of tasks with the capabilities of
personnel?
5.8 Has allowance been made for vacations,
holidays, training (learning time for each team
member), staff promotions & staff turnovers?
5.9 Has adequate time for orientation & training of
project staff been provided for in relation to
technical nature of the Application and the
experience levels of project personnel?
5.10 Has appropriate allowance been made for the
effect of the learning curve on all personnel
joining the project who do not have the
required prior industry, functional & technical
expertise?
5.11 Are the appropriate IT resources adequate to
meet planned commitments?
5.12 Are enough systems & user personnel assigned
to the project?
5.13 Are the people assigned to the project
sufficiently qualified?
5.14 Are project managers participating in the
project adequately to know its true status first
hand?
a. Is a qualified person sufficiently involved in
each critical area?
b. Are communication lines working?
5.15 Is a senior systems department representative
allocated to each user department to provide
 liaison and support?
Does the project have both a business team
leader and a technical team leader?
5.16 Do the project team have a good
understanding of the existing and/or proposed
hardware / software environments?
5.17 Are project leaders committed to this project
full time?
5.18 Are project team members committed full-
time?
5.19 Is the Production Support function adequately
resourced? Is the Production Support function
resourced full-time?
5.20 Is there a production support plan, with a plan
for transition from development to
production?
6 Beneficiaries
6.1 Is beneficiaries involvement adequate?
6.2 Are the people assigned to the project
sufficiently qualified?
6.3 Are the project team members located locally
to the beneficiaries?