Post Implementation Review Checklist

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Post Project Review Checklist  
 


This post implementation review (PIR) checklist is designed to ensure that you capture a complete and accurate review of the project, its successes, failures, weaknesses and issues encountered. It is important that any lessons learned are communicated clearly to all necessary parties and that they are incorporated into future projects.

Conducting a complete review of how a project has gone, during each phase and overall is an essential exercise for any project manager wanting to develop their skills and gain from each project experience. This activity is known as the Post Implementation Review (PIR) and has benefits for the organization as well as the project manager.

The review is conducted after the project is complete and looks at its successes, failures, weaknesses and issues encountered. All the findings must be documented and communicated to ensure that the organizations and future project managers benefit from the lessons learnt.

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Initially your document must provide a project summary, which details the project objective, its scope and a high-level overview of how well the project met its milestones, drawing attention to the key issues and problems it encountered. The purpose of this section is to ensure that all readers have sufficient background information to make an informed decision.

Post Implementation Review Checklist

An essential aspect of the review is to assess the appropriateness of the skills and knowledge of the project team. This must also include an assessment of how the allocation and availability of resources was appropriate at each phase of the project.

One of the most important sections of the PIR is the comparison of when deliverables were actually achieved against what was planned. This comparison is of all project aspects - deliverables, timings, communication, monitoring and management - will highlight were improvements can be made in the future and what changes can be made to processes to ensure things run smoothly.

A significant aspect that must be analyzed is the transition from project development to operations. Many organizations find that this area has significant negative impact on the ultimate return on their investment. It is only when a transition is well managed and adheres to the expected budget that the transition is a success.

By learning from earlier projects your organization can ensure that future projects follow best practices avoiding the many pitfalls and challenges projects often encounter. These best practices often influence the financial aspects of the project and how well they were managed.

Project PIR Post Implementation Review

Reviewing the budgeting and costing areas of a project is a critical part of the PIR for any organization as it has real implications on its financial health. Many projects heavily exceed the expected budget and stakeholders and shareholders will want a full explanation in these instances. Your focus will be on how well your actual planning, scheduling, monitoring and managing of the project budget compared to what was expected. Any variations from the planned budget must be adequately explained in this section.

A good project manager will be able to show during the reviewing process that the project schedule and time line anticipated potential issues and when they occurred they had little impact on the overall timing and success of the project. Information gathered in this process provides an excellent source of initiatives that can be incorporated into your project management methodology.

Such initiatives and improvements will be described as part of the recommendations section of your review document. It explains the reasoning behind any proposed changes and references other sections of the document as supporting evidence.

Project Management

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