A PARTial Revolution: Embracing Scorecards in Management

Driving Accountability & Effectiveness

During the last decade, a small revolution has been brewing within the United States Government. Federal Operations and Budgeting have undergone a quiet transformation, thanks to PART, otherwise known as the Program Assessment Rating Tool. Developed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2002, PART measures the success of all federal programs. As of the 2008 budgeting cycle, 98% of all Federal programs were reviewed using this tool, which equates to more than 1,000 programs across 15 Federal departments.

PART has become a major driving force in the allocation of taxpayer dollars and in setting the priorities within critical agencies, from the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Veterans Administration (VA) to the Department of Education (DoED) and Health and Human Services (HHS). PART’s success has been impressive in identifying underperforming programs and creating a results-driven management culture within the government.

PART was initiated during the Bush administration and the Obama administration has carried on the program, modifying it slightly for its own use. The current administration has used PART as a tool to retrofit the Federal hiring process, and to emphasize a “high- performing government,” thus creating more transparency. However it’s branded or packaged, we think the fundamental ideas behind PART are promising in several ways beyond budgeting. For one thing, Federal agencies should apply the principles of PART not only retroactively, but also in a forward-looking fashion, as they assess, prioritize and ultimately select individual initiatives for investment. Secondly, PART criteria should inform the design and planning of individual projects that make up larger-scale programs. Then, it should be baked into the ongoing program management approach in terms of reporting progress and milestones. Lastly, PART can be used as a template for managing and assessing the performance of third-party service providers, including management and technology consultants that assist Federal agencies.

The bottom line is that the principles behind PART – transparency, consistency and objective measurement – are just as powerful within the context of project design and delivery as they are for measuring performance. In this sense, the OMB is helping to further leading practices of top performing program management organizations.

How PART Works

According to the OMB:

“PART is designed to provide a consistent approach to assessing and rating programs across the Federal government. PART assessments review overall program effectiveness, from how well a program is designed to how well it is implemented and what results it achieves.”

Program leadership must complete a 25-question form that is organized around four key areas:

• Program purpose & design
• Strategic planning
• Program management
• Program results

From this relatively simple framework, it’s possible to gain visibility into program design (e.g., do they have quantifiable metrics and a defined scope), understand if they are duplicative of other initiatives, and see how they are managed day-to-day.

PART’s success has been in identifying programs that are clearly underperforming, delinquent or no longer relevant. Within the Veterans Affairs, Secretary Eric Shinseki cut 45 high-risk and mismanaged programs valued at over $3.3 billon in 2009. PART helped provide the justification.

PART & Project Management

Again, PART is more than a budget justification exercise or sharp blade for eliminating programs. It can be used in the context of project portfolio management (PPM) as organizational leadership analyzes their investment options. For example, if the DoED had to choose between new technology for making grant applications or a new partnership program with a group of states, the purpose and strategic plans for each of the options should be plainly stated, and the links to overall DoED strategy clearly expressed. Too often, investment choices are made without strategic alignment or a sound business case. Sometimes, finite resources are allocated based on non-objective factors – like internal politics or the latest management trends. Perhaps most damaging is when leadership is unwilling to acknowledge past mistakes by divesting programs that have outlived their usefulness or have no hope achieving usefulness in the first place.

The principles behind PART can also enhance project design by adding consistent criteria for measuring performance. The initial PART reviews uncovered a common pitfall that afflicts both the public and private sector – lack of clear and objective metrics for tracking effectiveness. Metrics definition should begin in the earliest stages of project planning.

Let’s say a branch of the Armed Services is redesigning a set of supply chain or requisition processes. The project plan should specify which work activities will be handled

faster and more efficiently. By what percentage will the overall time cycles be reduced? What percentage of errors will be eliminated through automation? Will related work steps or contiguous processes be improved? Those are the granular questions to ask so that projects can be evaluated and ROI quantified – and PART questionnaires completed thoroughly. They can also be shared with project teams so that everyone understands the exact “end-game” benefits they are working toward. This is “program purpose” applied to individual investments and projects.

Then there is project delivery or “program management,” which the OMB didn’t overlook when it built PART:

“PART reviews help inform budget decisions and identify actions to improve results. Agencies are held accountable for implementing PART follow- up actions, also known as improvement plans, for each of their programs.”

This is the essence of effective PMOs. All projects face challenges, but the successful ones are able to overcome them by having predetermined mitigation strategies, escalation paths and action plans to solve the problems encountered. Failed projects typically just continue on the way they started, falling further behind schedule and over budgets.

Large-scale technology changes particularly need clear insight into potential risks. A comprehensive approach to requirements analysis and definition, with input from the full range of stakeholders, is critical to gaining that insight. Further, project plans should highlight all “go/no-go” dependencies. This will allow integration to continue in some workstreams even if there are challenges in others. Further, ongoing reporting will highlight these risks against milestones and overall progress in such a way that unpleasant surprises are minimized or eliminated altogether. This is how projects stay on track.

While some of our peers that consult with Federal agencies and departments might not like the suggestion, we believe PART can serve as a model for tracking the performance and value contribution of vendors. Consider a few of the questions asked in the final category of the PART questionnaire:

• Does the program (including program partners) achieve its annual performance goals?
• Does the program demonstrate improved efficiencies or cost effectiveness in achieving program goals each year?
• Do independent evaluations of sufficient scope and quality indicate that the program is effective and achieving results?

Again, these may sound like simple questions, but they get to the heart of the issue. If results matter to Federal programs and individual projects, then the external teams and individuals who are brought into help achieve them must be managed accordingly.

The Bottom Line

The prevalence of PART has come about because effectively managed programs are a must today. Citizens are putting more and more pressure on government agencies to deliver. The people want transparency to see where their tax dollars are being spent and what value is being generated. Accountability is a requirement. In that sense, it’s good news that successive administrations have embraced it.

In the end, project implementation can only be as successful as those accountable for the program – the program management office, project managers, stakeholders and leaders. It’s a clear best practice to have effective and thorough assessment tools (like PART) in place to measure progress periodically. But building critical goals and objectives right into the project plan upfront and tying them directly to milestones and “gates” is just as valuable as methodology for ensuring overall effectiveness.

As PART has shown, management by scorecard can be applied broadly across large programs and entire agencies to ensure investments produce quantifiable value. But we believe it’s also extraordinarily powerful on the level of individual projects – especially in terms of keeping initiatives focused on and aligned to critical agency goals and keeping external partners focused on the mission. Indeed, we think consultants operating in the Federal space can and should use PART to help program managers address their largest challenges. That’s just one way the whole of mission fulfillment works out to be a lot more than the sum of the project parts.