Home Career

The nature of a project diagnosis can vary considerably.

We have already seen that risks and their potential exposure may be included as a separate topic, depending on the degree to which the project was expected to have significant risks and on the degree to which project risk management is in place on the project.

Some other characteristics of a project diagnosis can vary as well, depending on the following.

Internal diagnosis

A project diagnosis undertaken internally will be expected to have less explanation of its own background than one which is undertaken by external consultants.

This is simply because an internal diagnostician can take much for granted in the way that the organization will approach the report. External consultants are obliged to include the background to their appointment and their terms of reference.

A diagnosis conducted by consultants is also likely to use a wider set of comparators. This means that diagnoses conducted internally are more likely to measure the status of a project on the basis of other projects undertaken within the organization, whereas diagnoses by external consultants are more likely to view the project in the light of their broader knowledge of projects undertaken by other organizations.

There are some important judgements that can be made by management, based on this phenomenon.

Where external consultants are to be used because of their experience, then management must determine that they have that experience.

Fixed price project

A project diagnosis for a fixed-price project will have a different emphasis from a time-and-materials project.

With a fixed-price project, performance and progress are likely to be the major concerns, with the emphasis on whether or not they will be achieved within the fixed price to the required schedule and expectations of quality.

With a time-and-materials project, the major reporting is more likely to be upon the costs, with the emphasis on whether the projected costs of the project will be within the expected budget, given the need to performance, progress and quality.

Fixed schedule project

A project with a fixed schedule is different from one with a lower need to meet deadlines. As an example, there may be a project to determine the feasibility of a potential new product within the market.

Where new information comes to light during such a project, there may be a strong argument for extending the schedule to ensure that this new information is properly studied. As a result, there may be a subsequent project to develop the product for the market, with strict deadlines because of the impacts of delays on the marketing effort and on expected revenues.

If a project has less emphasis on deadlines, there will be a greater emphasis on quality (to ensure that all relevant facts have been gathered and analysed). The balance between deadlines and quality on projects will dictate the nature of their diagnoses.

Internal project

A project diagnosis will be different for a project run mainly internally within the organization than for a project that is mainly contracted out.

A single project can also change from being an mainly internal to a mainly external project, and, in some, cases, back again. An outsourcing project can be an example of this, where the early stages are performed internally on feasibility studies and costing, with a shift later to the outsourcer performing the bulk of the project activities in setting up the outsourced infrastructure and processes, with another shift to a period of shared responsibilities during the transition to outsourcing, and a further shift back to the organization to ensure that internal processes continue to function and to interact with the outsourced processes.

The nature of the project will vary depending on whether the performance and the management of activities are kept together during these shifts.

This does not necessarily make the project diagnosis more difficult, as the diagnosis will examine the current status rather than the history of shifts and changes, but it does make the diagnosis different.

As a result of changes in the nature of projects, it may be unreasonable to compare the results of a series of project diagnoses made throughout a project.