Reviews can serve a wide range of stakeholders and fulfill a variety of roles. It’s therefore not surprising that organizations undertake several different types of review on there most important projects. From my perspective, there are five distinct types of review. Each with its own focus and outcome.
1) Project Review
Can happen at any point through the project. It checks progress against the original schedule, budget, and deliverables. It looks at the effectiveness of the team, project management, engineering practices, and other related processes. It typically delivers some sort of assessment of the likelihood of project success and identifies areas of concern and corrective actions. This kind of review is also known as a Project Healthcheck or Project Evaluation. These are the kind of reviews I mostly do. Typically as part of a project recovery process.
2) Gate Review
Happens at the end of a project phase or at some other defined point in the project’s lifecycle. It typically represents a decision point, using the outputs from an evaluation to decide whether continued investment in the project is justified.
3) Project Audit
An objective evaluation by a group outside the project team. A project audit is about being compliant and about the now. An audit aims to show the extent to which your project conforms to the required organizational and project standards. So, if your organization uses PRINCE2 or their own project management methodology, an audit will look at how closely you follow the processes. An audit can take place during or after the project.
4) Project Retrospective
Happens as the project closes down. It assesses the overall success of the project and identifies what did or didn’t work during its execution, generating lessons learned for the future. Also known as Postmortem or Post-project Review.
5) Benefits Realization Review
Happens after the organization has had some chance to use the outputs from the project. It evaluates the extent to which the benefits identified in the original business case have been achieved.