Program Health Assessment
How healthy is your program?
Eight questions, two minutes. You see your score before I ask you for anything. They look for the warning signs that mean a program needs intervention rather than more resources.
Where does your program stand against its committed date?
The instrument, in full
The eight questions, and what each one is for.
These are the questions I ask in the first ten days of a stalled program. They are published here in full, with what each one is testing, because a list of questions you cannot see is not evidence of anything. Nothing below is gated, and you can use it without me.
- 01
Where does your program stand against its committed date?
What I am looking for
Whether the gap is still closable by working differently, or has passed the point where only the date can move. Past about six months, most programs are not late; they are running to a plan nobody believes any more, and the first honest act is saying so.
The answers
- On track, or up to three months behind
- Three to six months behind
- Six months or more behind
- 02
How many project managers or contractors have cycled through this program?
What I am looking for
How much context has been lost. Every handover resets what the program knows about itself, and by the third one the reasons behind the early decisions usually exist nowhere except in people who have left. In a regulated program that is not just inefficiency, it is missing evidence.
The answers
- None, same PM since start
- One or two transitions
- Three or more transitions
- 03
Where is executive confidence in this program?
What I am looking for
Whether there is still enough credit in the room to re-baseline once, honestly, and be believed. This is the answer that most changes what I would do first. A program with a real problem and intact confidence can be fixed in the open; one that has spent its confidence has to rebuild trust and the plan at the same time.
The answers
- Strong and stable
- Weakening, some skepticism
- Significantly eroded, leadership is losing faith
- 04
How is your team staffed for delivery?
What I am looking for
Whether anyone on the program can actually settle a cross-functional argument. Capable people without the standing to decide will escalate, and escalation is slower than the critical path. The failure looks like a resourcing problem and is nearly always an authority problem.
The answers
- Senior leaders actively involved
- Mix of senior and mid-level staff
- Primarily junior staff or rotating contractors
- 05
What's your regulatory or compliance exposure if this program fails?
What I am looking for
Whether the date belongs to you or to somebody outside the building. This is the welded corner. When an outside authority owns the deadline, the usual trade of scope against time against cost collapses, and advice built on that trade starts producing confident, wrong answers.
The answers
- Low to none
- Moderate, some risk
- High, real regulatory or market consequences
- 06
How many agencies, vendors, or stakeholder groups are involved?
What I am looking for
Where the dates are unowned. Ownership tends to blur at the seams between organisations, and an unowned date on a regulator's clock is a slip that has not been noticed yet. I am counting boundaries, not headcount.
The answers
- Single owner, well-contained
- 2-3 stakeholder groups with defined relationships
- 4+ stakeholders with unclear ownership or priorities
- 07
Your last consultant or advisor delivered what?
What I am looking for
What the organisation now expects from outside help. A team that has been handed a diagnosis and left with it will, reasonably, treat the next person the same way until proven otherwise. It tells me how much of the first fortnight goes on earning the right to be useful.
The answers
- Active support and embedded delivery
- Some ongoing support with gaps
- A final report and disappeared
- 08
How would you describe your current visibility into program status?
What I am looking for
Whether the status you are shown is the status that exists. Surprises are the symptom worth taking seriously: they mean the reporting is describing something other than the work. A plan that has been green for three quarters while everyone close to it knows the date is gone is not a reporting gap, it is a program that has stopped being able to tell you the truth.
The answers
- Clear, real-time, dashboard-driven
- Adequate but manual, based on meetings
- Unclear, reactive, lots of surprises
How it scores
Each answer is worth nought, one or two, so sixteen is the worst possible result. Above about two thirds I would treat the program as needing intervention rather than more resources. Between two fifths and two thirds, the problems are real and still respond to early action. Below that, they are the ordinary friction of a hard program. Those boundaries are a judgement, not a measurement, and they are drawn from which combinations of answers I have seen precede a missed date rather than from a study.