Attain was commissioned by a Community Services Provider in the North of England to develop a programme management toolkit to support consistent, efficient and effective delivery of their projects.

  • Multiple projects were being delivered across the business, with each unit using their own approach and documents. There was no central oversight of those projects to allow prioritisation, appropriate allocation of resources, and support to deliver within timescales.
  • The Provider was looking for an approach to project management that is consistent, but also flexible and proportionate to allow prioritisation and robust planning of programmes and projects.
  • The toolkit needed to include a log of programmes and projects that supports prioritisation in line with the Provider’s strategic aims, as well as supporting monitoring and escalation to deliver projects in a timely manner.

What We did

  • We worked together with service leads and projects managers in the different business units to define the requirements for the toolkit to ensure it would meet their needs.

  • We held interviews with key stakeholders to discuss a selected set of key lines of enquiry, collecting information on current methodology and approach. We discussed how a toolkit approach could deliver benefits to their work.

  • Where possible, we included templates in the toolkit that were already used by the Provider’s teams and merged documents where multiple templates were used across the business.

  • We drafted a toolkit that allows proportionality and flexibility in its implementation. The toolkit was tested and discussed with project managers from across the business.

Outcomes

  • We designed a programme management toolkit that supports a moderate level of control over delivery. It facilitates prioritisation, reporting, scheduling, risk management and supports programme and projects managers.

  • The approach and requirements were co-developed with service leads and project leads across the business so it allows flexibility and meets the requirement of different business units.

  • Targeted engagement was undertaken to specify proportionality of the toolkit and make it specific to the current business needs.

  • The consistent but flexible approach was welcomed by project managers across the business and was already being tested for wider implementation.