Quality Assurance of projects and programs: searching impactful project risks and never-before-seen shortcomings

Hein de Jong

Managing HR IT Consultant

January 15, 2025

After Christina wrote an introduction to project and process management earlier this week, I want to look with you at quality assurance in projects. To minimize the risks in an HR IT project for not achieving its goals and results, it makes sense to apply quality assurance during a project program and project. Such an assurance looks at whether all conditions are present to achieve a good project result, and which risks could disrupt this result. Call it an MOT on your project.   

Quality assurance for the project result 

In practice, I often see that everyone in a project is focused on getting the project results, on budget, and on time. Risks are identified and seen, and defects come to light. But under the pressure of a successful and timely go live, these risks and flaws -and to a large extent unconscious- are kept smaller than they really are. The risk of major disruptions is looked away from, with the assumption that these risks will still be mitigated or resolved during the rest of the project. Not so. Before you know it, the consequences of these risks grow into impactful proportions that put a lot of pressure on the project result. A leaky faucet that starts flowing harder and harder and at some point, becomes almost impossible to close. Something that, in many cases, only emerges toward the end of the project.   

Quality assurance is therefore not something boring for your project, but rather necessary to ensure a good result. It feels like a thorn in the flesh, but it is a help that can put its finger on the sore spot. The project result becomes more predictable and successful by doing so. With a result that meets the requirements and expectations of the organization and customer satisfaction with the end user. Small defects that you discover during the project are often still relatively easy to repair at that time. There is still time to make adjustments. This prevents a project from not being delivered on time, and costs from going over budget. No one wants so many deficiencies after going live that it seriously disrupts operations.

Control and Consultday 

At Consultday, we test projects using our real-world experience. First and foremost, we keep things simple, straightforward, and understandable. We articulate our findings clearly and transparently. We look at both business and IT aspects. In this way, we contribute to an assured successful project result.   

At Consultday, we do quality control from different angles. I describe these below, giving some examples for each angle: 

  1. Technology and content
    As a starting point, we look at the quality and completeness of the requirements and who is involved. Are these requirements clear and understandable? Are the right HR specialists involved from the policy, terms of employment and regulations? Have process owners, who know the end-to-end processes well, provided their input? And are employees in charge of day-to-day operational and executive activities involved? After all, they know what end users find important, have their feet in the clay, and know where the risks in the implementation are.   
  2. Testing is reviewed too. In addition to the operation of the functional units, is testing focused on end-to-end processes, for example? With interfaces that work technically and where production data flows flawlessly through the chain? This allows you to address and improve any obstacles or inconveniences, minimizing the chance that you will see this for the first time at the actual go-live. 
  3. Organisation and Governance
    What is important, is how the project governance is set up. This governance is the act or method of governing, the code of conduct, and the supervision of organizations during the project. Here you ask yourself questions such as: what consultation structures are there with which participants and how regularly do these take place? For example, how are decisions about changes made? How are these prepared, delivered, and documented? Clear governance brings peace to the project team and the organization. It is efficient and pleasant if everyone knows which structures are used and where decisions are made. It is important, for example, where and when deliverables are established and signed off, so that the design phase does not continue while the construction phase has already started. 
  4. People and culture
    As mentioned earlier, the quality of employees is an important factor. Content knowledge, but also taking ownership contributes to project success. Identifying issues, raising them, picking them up, and solving them. A critical but constructive attitude, focused on cooperation in the project and with the organization. In the ideal situation, you would want an employee with an embedded mechanism for quality control. 
  5. Planning and finance
    A no-brainer, but very important: what is the quality of the planning? Do we say we are working Agile, when the schedule is already set for the next 2 years? Or is there a “high-over” schedule, without a list of detailed deliverables, against which project progress can be measured? And what about the finances? Is there a business case and is achieving the goals from this case still realistic? Parts that seem very simple on paper, but where surprises can come out of nowhere, usually toward the end of the project. You want to avoid that. 
  6. Change and Communication
    Preparing and taking the organization to a new system is critical to success. What is the change story that goes with this change? What is the beckoning perspective that the new HR package will bring? After all, everything will get better with the arrival of the new HR self-service processes, for example! Who are the carriers and frontrunners in the intended change? They are the keys to success! These are the questions you need to ask and then answer for good quality assurance.  

    Of great importance is that those who will work with the new self-service processes know how to do so. Preferably barrier-free and without training. In my experience, a lot of time is often spent on creating instructions, videos, and training. On the contrary, practice has taught us that only when someone gets stuck in the implementation of the process does, they start asking for help. And what is then arranged for this end user? What is instant help? Is there an easily accessible service desk or is AI tooling such as myMeta available? Tools that help the user further in the process at the time of need. And if there is a service desk, how is it organized? For example, is there a ticketing system that allows calls to be picked up, tracked and managed? Or an AI help that answers all your questions instantly. 

This is how we look at projects at Consultday. Together we identify the impact risks and make unseen shortcomings precisely visible. With the goal of improving the project result and having more certainty of success. We go from good to better!  

Get in touch

Do you want to identify your impactful project risks and make the never-before-seen visible? I would love to help you with this! Get in touch so we can discuss the easiest way to do this together. Speak soon?


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