accurate assessment knowing the score

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value-driven evaluation A properly conducted assessment helps to build knowledge and trust. There is no point in doing an assessment unless you're prepared to communicate the findings, learn from them and act upon them. A purely technical or bureaucratic assessment usually fails to engage the attention of important stakeholders. Self-assessment can be valuable. In the right (supportive) context, people are often more critical of themselves than others would be. But in the wrong context, people just get defensive. When an assessment has a hidden agenda (e.g. blame or rejection), this often distorts the findings. Read on to find out more about our approach.

Introduction

Every assessment should be worth doing. It helps to have clear answers to the following questions.

	Purpose	What is the assessment intended to achieve?
	Scope	What is being assessed? What can it be compared with?
	Focus	What aspects are being assessed?
	Evaluation Scheme	What evaluation criteria are relevant? Is there a standard model or benchmark?
	Managed Approach	How is the assessment to be performed? Who is taking which roles?
	Follow-Up	What are the likely or possible outcomes? How will these be implemented?

Purpose

Managers commission assessments for a variety of explicit reasons and hidden agendas. Some assessments are intended to fail.
 

	To justify a decision already taken.
	To find ways of keeping something. Prove that it's okay as it is. Or show that it could be okay, with just a few minor changes.
	To justify throwing something out and replacing it. Prove that it's fundamentally flawed or obsolete. Prove that something else would be much better.
	As a post-mortem, to find out what can be rescued or learned from something that is perceived to have failed.
	As an opening move in a genuinely open attempt to improve things.

Veryard Projects is only interested in healthy assessments that have an open and positive agenda.

Scope

Our consultancy assignments often start with an evaluation or assessment of something.

	Business Strategy / Process
	Business Relationship
	Requirement / Plan / Contingency
	IT Service / Provision / Process
	IT Solution / Architecture
	...

We need to understand clearly WHAT is being evaluated, and WHAT (if anything) it is being compared with.

Focus

Each assessment usually has a primary focus - but other aspects of assessment may also need to be considered.

	Value
	Risk
	Flexibility
	Quality
	Conformance
	...

Many standard assessment approaches concentrate on conformance. An operation is assessed for conformance to a large set of rules and procedures, regardless of whether these rules and procedures yield any real benefit for the operation. Such assessment approaches are often seen and practised as bureaucratic deadweight - although when used intelligently they can still be useful.

Evaluation Scheme

An assessment is carried out against an explicit value system. A set of evaluation criteria, preferably ranked and weighted. Or a model or standard, which provides a structured framework for a class of assessments, as well as a basis for comparison and benchmarking.

There are various models in the public domain that can be used for assessment.  These include:
 

	EFQM Baldrige	Business Excellence
	ISO SPICE SEI CMM	Software Process

Managed Approach

Roles

Fact-finding
Interpretation
Analysis and Synthesis

Follow-Up

An assessment should be communicated - preferably in the first instance to those with power, proximity and interest.

An assessment should result in both action and learning.

An assessment usually provides a snapshot at the time of assessment. This often gets out-of-date very quickly. Small details found by the assessment are likely to be altered, even if the underlying problems have not really been fixed. Sometimes evidence will be destroyed, either deliberately by people wishing to conceal the extent of a problem, or accidently by people clumsily trying to fix the problem. Sometimes it is useful to install some mechanism to keep the assessment findings up-to-date.

Pitfalls

Lack of Participation

The authority of an assessment report depends on the perceived independence and expertise of the assessors, and their access to relevant information. People who feel threatened by an assessment will try to undermine it by various means, including withholding information or participation.

Technical Assessments

If you ask a software engineer to assess a software process, you will usually get a highly technical report, containing a large number of obscure technical points and issues. If you ask the responsible project manager for a response, you will usually get a highly plausible dismissal of the report, and an apparently powerful justification of existing practices. So what is the truth, and how can senior management ever determine it?
We believe that purely technical assessments have little management value. They typically produce lots of data, but it is practically impossible to make intelligent management decisions on the basis of technical data alone. Although technical assessments do have some use, they must be combined with a business management assessment before they have any real meaning.

Assessment Services

An assessment is carried out at a fixed price and is based on a fixed set of criteria.

An assessment is carried out as a combination of self-assessment (in workshops and interviews) and audit, and results in an assessment report. (You can think of this as similar to a house-buyer's survey, with recommendations for additional specialist surveys where appropriate.)

Our assessors are happy to advise separately on planning and implementing improvements, but this is not included in the assessment itself.

For large clients, we can also provide training for in-house assessors.

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in asssociation with	This page last updated on November 10th, 1999  Copyright © 1999 Veryard Projects Ltd  http://www.veryard.com/sqm/assess.htm