Five Types of Project Reviews

At MetaPM we pride ourselves on being Project Management experts.  There are many elements of Project Management that are important contributors to delivery success; one of those is the humble project review.

Project reviews are often instigated as an organisational reaction to a significant or highly visible project failure, as opposed to being planned, initiated and performed in a fashion which allows the review team to understand what’s really going on in a certain project/portfolio. We think project reviews should be built into any project/portfolio to help projects and organisations avoid unnecessary failure and to learn from those inevitable failures that are experienced when one is striving to change and innovate.  

So, what are the five types of Project Review? 

 The Association for Project Management recognises five types of review, these are: 

• Evaluation review: Can happen at any point in a project to check progress against baselines and check management and associated process effectiveness. This encompasses Health Checks, Risk Reviews, Quality Reviews etc. 
   

• Gate review: These happen at the end of a project phase or at some other point in a project lifecycle. It typically represents a decision point.
   
• Audit: An objective evaluation by a group outside the project team. 
   
• Post-Implementation Review: Happens as the project closes. It assesses the overall success of the project and identifies what did or didn’t work, generating lessons learned.
   
• Benefits realisation review: Happens after the organisation has had some chance to use the outputs from the project. It evaluates the extent to which the benefits identified in the original business case have been achieved. 

A project will not necessarily require all these reviews; however, when setting up a program of reviews, a mixture of different approaches should be considered for use across the portfolio of projects. 

Want to find out more about Project Reviews? Contact us today on enquiries@metapm.com.au or give us a call on 1800 80 436.