An independent read on the programme.
Two weeks, reporting to whoever carries the consequence rather than to the delivery team — with the uncomfortable finding delivered while it is still cheap.
2 weeks · reports to the accountable executive
Amber for four months is a finding.
Status reporting comes up through the people doing the work, in a structure that rewards confidence. Assurance is a separate line of sight, which is why it surfaces things the steering pack does not.
- 01Whether the plan behind the date has changed while the work has not.
- 02Critical path, dependencies, and the milestones quietly carrying all the risk.
- 03Contingency: how much has been consumed, and against what.
- 04An honest cost to complete, including the work nobody has costed yet.
- 05Defect trend and test coverage against the risk being carried.
- 06Whether the data migration has been rehearsed with real data, or only discussed.
- 07The integrator's change requests, and what they say about the original scope.
- 08Whether governance hears bad news early, or only after it has become expensive.
What lands on your desk
Findings, rated
What is true about the programme, with severity and evidence, written for the executive who has to act on it rather than for the project team.
A schedule opinion
Whether the date holds, what would have to be true for it to, and where the plan is optimistic rather than wrong.
Cost to complete
A defensible number from here, separated into committed, expected and at risk.
Replan options
Where one is needed: scope cut to something achievable, resequenced, with the trade-offs stated plainly.
Go-live criteria
Written in advance, against defect trends, rehearsed migration, trained users and a tested rollback — so the decision can be made calmly.
A governance recommendation
What the steering forum should decide, who should be in it, and what reporting would have surfaced this earlier.
Two weeks, because a slow review is part of the problem.
- Days one to three
Documents, plan, RAID, contracts and change requests. Read before anyone is interviewed, so the conversations are specific.
- Days four to seven
Interviews across the programme and the vendor — including the people who are not invited to steering, who usually know first.
- Days eight to ten
Findings tested against evidence, cost to complete built, and replan options drafted where the date will not hold.
- Day ten
Delivered to the accountable executive first, then to the programme, because the order matters for what gets said.
The energy version of this work is ETRM programme assurance: holding the integrator to scope, testing against real months, and recovering programmes that have slipped.
Before you ask
Will this undermine our delivery team?
Handled badly, it can. We report findings, not people, and the team sees them at the same time as the executive. Most delivery leads want the problems surfaced — they have usually been raising them.
We are three weeks from go-live.
Then the question is readiness rather than assurance, and we scope it that way: criteria, evidence, and a clear recommendation you can take to the decision.
Bring us the programme that has been amber too long.
Forty-five minutes on where it stands, what the reporting says, and what you suspect is actually true.