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Moving the Goal Posts
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
You don’t need me to tell you the definition of a project, so I won’t. But think of a project as moving the goal posts for an organization--we used to do this, now we do that. If those goal posts are part of the governance framework, then you need to have a work package to handle the change. What makes up that work package?
The challenge
Governance can cover a multitude of items--we may be dealing with Sarbanes Oxley or similar legislation, it could be an industry requirement or simply a set of internal controls monitored by a company governance officer. In this case, it really doesn’t matter; the challenge is still the same:
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Existing controls need to be maintained until the change is implemented into the operational environment
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The modified/new controls need to be in place as soon as the change is made
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There needs to be measures/metrics/processes in place to allow for trending and comparison between the pre-change and post-change environments
All of these items need to be considered in planning your project. Failure to address any one of these areas can exposure your organization to significant operational risk, and potentially legal liability. I have heard the argument that the first of these items--the existing controls--are outside the scope of the project. That simply can’t be true. …
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