Ron Rosenhead has a wonderful post about “two project teams.” Ron suggest, through an article he read, that a second team could

• Check out whether the risks are too great or acceptable
• Develop a business case for or against the project
• Identify whether there any project benefits – what they are and whether they are achievable
• developing a plan identifying resources required and how this will impact on other projects and business as usual
• Identify whether you have sufficient resources of the right caliber
• Check is there is a link back to the company strategy

Not all these are direct activities of PP&C. But the organization where PP&C typically lives – Finance and Business Operation (F&BO – say that fast 5 times to get the gist of our status) – does have this accountability.

F&BO includes PP&C, Contracts, Subcontracts, Procurement, and things like that.

These activities provide an external assessment of the project's performance through the “planned” performance compared to the “actual” performance. Earned Value is of course the basis of this assessment, but there can be other simpler assessments as well.

You planned to have 20 tables in the database done, by the end of the week (all of equal effort) and you got 18 of them done, you're 90% physically complete.

When you separate the “doing” from the measurement of the “doing,” you start to establish credibility for the work being performed in ways you can't when they are not separate.

Original post: Herding Cats