Case Study
Mark was proud to be doing well on his project, so it surprised him when a meeting with stakeholders revealed that his team did not meet quality and project standards. Although Mark and his team were a brilliant team, they were not implementing the project as expected.
Project Manager, Mark is working on a three-year project in Jigawa State. Through the completion of the various activities highlighted at the beginning of this project, Mark and his team thought the project was on track. They had organized capacity-building workshops for immunization officers in select health facilities, but it was insufficient.
Mark organized a pause and reflect session with his team to analyze the project implementation phases and activities they had conducted. This was to enable them to identify loopholes. It was during the session that they concluded that they should have conducted regular health checks as a part of the project improvement plan.
After working closely with the Project Quality Assurance (PQA) specialist, they created a robust improvement plan which included quarterly health checks as a key component. The project met quality standards in a short period after they began the implementation of the quality plan.
Just like Mark resolved with his team, Project teams and Project Managers at eHealth Africa employ the health check tool to checkmate projects’ health.
Mohammed Bello.Project Manager at eHealth Africa
What is a project health check?
A project health check is a review of all projects to validate that projects are delivering on defined scope, processes, and agreed objectives. A project health check helps you assess the current state of any project and identify problems that could cause issues during the entire endeavor if left unattended. As a project manager, knowing the health of your team is crucial. Project Health Checks are a valuable means of assessing the likelihood of success (or the risk of failure) of in-progress projects. They can provide a safety net and early warning system for senior management and for individual project managers by revealing environmental, structural, or intrinsic flaws in projects that, for those absorbed in managing them, are often difficult to recognize.
Our previous health check tool wasn't able to give us all the information \when it was time to access a project as there weren’t many insight categories, with projects scoring 100% but defaulting on key quality areas. So we upgraded to a more improved version of the health check tool that could assess projects based on eight core project parameters with sub-parameters including external parameters and stakeholders’ feedback.
Introducing Health Check V2
This newly introduced eHealth Africa’s health check self-assessment tool caters to the need for a project improvement plan, providing the next steps to improve project quality. Rather than a situation where the Project Support team receives documents from project managers and conducts the assessment, this tool allows project managers and project teams to self-assess their projects.
Project Managers at eHA have widely welcomed the tool because of its improved categories and wider reach.
Mohammed Bello, a Project Manager, explained that he is excited because the tool will improve his work. “I am very excited to have this new tool to help improve my work.” He added that the tool is an upgrade from the previous one, “The new self-assessment tool is an improvement, and I particularly like it because it encompasses everything a project needs to do well.”
For Tahir Buhari, another Project Manager with eHealth Africa, the scoring metrics are what appeal to him. “It is more practical than the previous tool we used. The scoring metrics are a lot clearer and easier to self-assess.”
eHealth Africa’s goal of ensuring that all projects implemented meet standards resulted in an improved version of the Health Check assessment tool. Project Managers use this tool to identify when a project needs improvement and make changes when necessary. We have made this tool as simple as possible to use, while still maintaining quality. At eHealth Africa, we constantly design new tools that will improve our processes.