• Was engaged to provide governance oversight to a portfolio of projects.
• Projects were often poorly prepared for staged funding approvals.
• Delays to funding approval and hence delivery were common, and Internal Audit had recommended that this situation should be rectified.

• Was asked to put in place a framework to address the situation, and in doing so reduce costly delivery delays at a time when the organisational ability to fund these delays was severely constrained.

• Reviewed existing processes and PM artefacts, and integrated them together into a single process, for which I drew a process flow diagram.
• Created a check point review template to facilitate reviews and provide an indication of a project’s readiness to go forward for an incremental funding approval.
• Carried out gate reviews with project managers using this template, and pointed out to them areas where their approach would lead to funding rejection, or deferral of approval due to lack of information.
• Worked with project managers to improve the quality of their submissions to the investment decision board, using the review template as a guide.
• Created and delivered to training to the portfolio office team to enable them to use the approach on the projects within their purview.

• Using this approach, increased the proportion of incremental project funding being either approved or rejected on their first presentation to the investment decision board, as opposed to being deferred due to lack of information on which to make a decision.
• Consequently, improved speed of project pipeline management and in-flight project delivery whilst satisfying corporate financial governance requirements, and reducing unnecessary expense against the organisation’s constrained project delivery budget.

• Project governance