Project Management Assurance

Abstract

CIOs are increasingly held responsible for generating a positive return on IT project investment. As a result, there is great interest for devising ways to assure successful project outcomes. By assessing the project throughout its lifecycle there is an increased chance of achieving success because potential risks can be identified and addressed before it is too late. In this paper, we introduce and describe the idea of project management assurance (PMA). We define project management assurance (PMA) as a set of assurance activities that are integrated with the IT (information technology) project management lifecycle. An internal group, independent of the project team, performs the assurance activities, which includes continual review of control mechanisms to assure adherence to standards, best practices and procedures. The objective of the PMA process is to assure project success by reducing risk, continuously assessing internal project controls, and improving overall project quality while conforming to the stated schedule and budget requirements.