The apparently sensible mechanism of approval gateways within projects and programmes has a range of underlying problems which instead of aiding the probability of successful outcomes - we argue - pile on problems to an already deeply flawed process. This seems a counterintuitive claim to make so what is its justification ? There are a number of aspects.

An important aspect: the effect a formal review stage has on the structure and timescales of a project.

As any Project Manager who has reported their project progress to a review session knows, reviews can take a lot of time and effort in preparation. By the standards of most organisations, formal project reviews are an unusually public evaluation of the performance of an individual - particularly that of the Project Manager. It's somewhat akin to reviews by critics in the media of stage, TV or movie performances. It's very public criticism. The performance of most members of organisations are reviewed in private with a degree of confidentiality and discretion expected. Not quite so with a formal Project Review.

A Project Manager will therefore generally put a lot of work into preparing the best possible picture ready for each review. It can take a week's work to prepare. That is, a week (say) in which the Project Manager is focused on trying to assure the continuation of their project - not on managing the effectiveness of the project. In a multi-stage project, surviving project reviews can become the dominant aim and a way of life.

Timing of Reviews and 'Gateways'

The amount of time needed to prepare for a formal review has an effect on the timescales throughout the project life-cycle. For example, if it takes a week to prepare for a review, then it follows that there needs to be enough preparation time and time for some productive project work to be done before the next review. So there has to be sufficient elapse time to justify the effort of holding reviews. That could be 3 months or much longer for many organisations.

The formal review mechanism tends therefore to influence and extend the activities within the stage and the timescales of the overall project life-cycle. (In a similar vein, the UK Government's OGC Gateway Review function requests 6-8 weeks notice ahead of a review: reference). Now let's remember the realities of scheduling Reviews.

Scheduling Formal Reviews or Gateways

To have the authority to make decisions on the use of funding and resources, the members of a review panel will often include senior officers of the organisation. Scheduling the time of senior personnel is often a challenging diary- management task.

Their limited availability means reviews end up being scheduled around the availability of senior stakeholders rather than when called for by the project plan. Senior people's limited availability... often becomes their unavailability. Which leads to postponed reviews or attendance by deputies. Deputies may have to consult with their bosses before making decisions which leads to further delays. Formal reviews can easily become bottlenecks which delay project progress - and usually do.

Preparing for a review means gathering as much good news as possible on the progress of the deliverables promised for completion at the end of the stage. Deliverables may be artefacts or products such as completed documents, software or completed tests. Then there are 'management products' such as business cases, requirements specifications, designs or plans. This is a significant point. Completion of products tends to be the way conventional project management methods measure progress and success.

The Value of Formal Reviews/Gateways - do they have value?

There is little value to formal reviews or gateways. How can we make that claim ? Well, remember your own experience or these comments from the 13 December 2003 edition of The Economist magazine.

In an article on the history of UK Government IT project disasters entitled 'The proof of the pudding: government IT', The Economist reported that the UK's "troublesome tax-credit project passed its Gateway reviews with flying colours. In the subsequent foul-up, an estimated £2 billion was overpaid, while other payments were delayed for weeks".  

Reviews are intended to check on what has been completed to-date versus schedule. That is, the measurement scale is... have planned deliverables been completed satisfactorily? As the Economist article indicates, completion of deliverables is no measure of the eventual success or otherwise of the project. All it is measuring is the progress in completion of the stages as called for in the project plan. It does not measure, or even indicate, whether what is to be implemented will or is even capable of delivering the benefits promised in the original project justification. The question of whether the project is capable of delivering the promises is an entirely different subject - a question which the high failure rate of projects suggests goes unanswered.

So why do the 'best practice' structured project methodologies place such faith and emphasis on formal review stages?

Structured project methodologies are concerned with delivering a 'something'; a product of some kind. That's their aim. The 'something' to be implemented has been proposed as the solution. The 'something' is proposed as the means to achieve commercial or organisational objectives. Accordingly, the review in the initiation stage at the start of the project is intended to assess

1. the foreseeable efficacy of the proposed solution and,
    

2. the proposed project stages to put that solution in place.

Reviews are therefore not able to answer searching questions into the actual efficacy of the 'solution'. That's because conventionally structured projects such as those following PRINCE2 are not structured to provide real-life feedback to project gateways . A key reason is that the measurement of performance or behaviour of project deliverables in the real-world is not called for within the PRINCE2 life-cycle.

The information reviews really need for decision-making

That means, the critical information of most interest to senior stakeholders about how effective the project outcome is likely to be, cannot be reported to the formal reviews. Due to the structured design of the project, the information is just not available.

Information that can be reported is limited to the funding consumed, the resource levels used, the actual time taken versus planned,  perhaps data on deliverables quality and perhaps changes in organisational/political/market priorities. But there are two aspects to this.

1. it is information that often doesn't need a formal review to disseminate. If projects are exceeding time, resource or other budgets- or there are major changes in priorities then yes, a decision-making meeting can be convened as necessary;
    

2. for many senior stakeholders, the information to be reported is of no great significance because it tells them little about what they care about; namely, will the project meet its aims and perform in the real world.

In fact, the only feedback advocated in PRINCE2 on the effectiveness or otherwise of the deliverables in real life are the Post-Project Reviews. But by definition, Post Project Reviews are carried out - if at all - after closure of the project, when it's too late.

If routine formal reviews have little value for senior stakeholders, why are we surprised when it's difficult to gain their active participation or attendance? Can we validly complain about the lack of senior management support?

And why do we think that adding yet more formal reviews - based on the same principles - will help? Maybe it's the "it's not working - we must push harder" principle!

Summary

The nature of structured-project methodologies determines that lengthy project stages are completed before real-life testing of what has been proposed as a solution. The solution may therefore not be capable of meeting the aims of the initial project justification but this will only become clearly evident to all on completion of the project; when it's too late.

A long series of UK government IT project failures bear testament to the inherent inadequacies of the gateway reviews as reported in The Economist article cited above, and to the PRINCE2 approach that is the de facto standard for UK government projects.

There are also many examples from the commercial sector. The well known track record of many failed, expensive, CRM system (Customer Relationship Management), ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning) and Knowledge Management projects are just some examples of the disappointing results.

Reviews or gateways in the implementation project do not provide the critical measures. The critical measures are instead, around the likely effectiveness of the proposed solutions and the practical real-life evidence that the ideas will and do work. The real question is: can and will the project or programme contribute as promised to our organisation's objectives? That's what matters.

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