Gateway Reviews - Lessons Learned Report

This report presents the lessons learned from the New Zealand Government’s Gateway reviews. Gateway is a project assurance methodology that involves short, focused reviews at critical points in the project's life-cycle by a team of reviewers not associated with the project. Lessons learned are observations gained from Gateway reviews which highlight opportunities for project and programme management improvements in New Zealand Government agencies.

This is the first New Zealand lessons learned report. The results are an analysis of 53 Gateway reports conducted across 33 projects and 25 agencies from the inception of Gateway in May 2008 through to March 2011.

Reviews conducted during the period were predominantly at the projects’ initiation stages (Gates 0, 1 and 2). Five of these projects have progressed to the point of ‘Investment Decision’ (Gate 3) in 2010/11, and two through to ‘Readiness for Service’ reviews (Gate 4) in late 2010/early 2011.

Good Practice

Positive lessons learned tend to emerge as projects progress to second and subsequent reviews. Pleasingly, the two projects which have reached Gate 4 (‘Readiness for Service’) have since successfully transitioned into service. Stakeholders of one of these suggest that it should be regarded as a best-practice project on an international stage.

The review reports identified several other agencies with projects on track to deliver successful outcomes through sound project management principles.  These agencies generally share the following good practice fundamentals, encompassing many of Gateway’s key themes:

• projects strongly aligned with organisation and government policies and goals

• clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and leadership, including an engaged senior executive as Senior Responsible Owner (SRO)

• clear governance arrangements that ensure on-going alignment with business objectives

• early and sustained stakeholder engagement, with active management of critical stakeholder issues

• organisational commitment to good project and risk management practice

• project team with the necessary skills and experience

• business cases with transparent underlying drivers, well-researched and rigorously analysed options, and benefits with specific metrics and delivery timeframes.

Key Themes

The Gateway reviews included in this report made a total of 608 recommendations.  

The lessons learned presented in this report are grouped by the following key themes.

1 Business Case

2 Programme / Project Management

3 Risks and Issues Management

4 Stakeholder Management

5 Resourcing

6 Governance

7 Programme / Project Planning

8 Management of Change

9 Sourcing Strategy

10 Dependencies Management

11 Financial Management

12 Methodology

To read the full report, go to the PDF version, attached above.