Step 5: Peer Review Deployment

As with the earlier steps, I believe once again that it is essential to involve all project and program managers in the process.

Start by defining, documenting and agreeing a high-level peer review process based on fixed points in a project and program life cycle.

Develop the necessary standards and guidelines to support the process or base them on something like the gateway review process (see below).

Transfer everything to the project and/or program office to maintain, support and develop.

Identify potential peer reviewers and provide them with any necessary training in the process.

Select a pilot project, run peer reviews on it, review the outcome of the pilot, refine and roll out the process and standards.

Then repeat the same steps for a program.

Gateway Review Process
This is an example of the Gateway peer review process as it is applied to programs and projects:

A project (on the left) has a review at the completion of each stage, with a focus on: 1) Business Justification, 2) Delivery Strategy, 3) Investment Decision, 4) Readiness for Service, and one or more on 5) Benefits Realisation.

A program (on the right) has a review during the Definition Phase, one for each Delivery Phase, and a final one during the Closure Phase. But please don’t ask me why they decided to call them all gateway 0!

Next week we will look at the final step in the process, portfolio management.