Considerations in determining a Delivery Confidence Assessment (DCA)
This guide is not intended to be used in a prescriptive or formulaic way.
The purpose of this document is to support independent assurers by providing structured evidence of what has been found to contribute to digital project success and failure.
This guide is not a prescribed template. Rather, agencies are encouraged to incorporate these assessments into their own governance processes in managing assurance activities and their outcomes.
When providing a DCA, assurance providers are encouraged to briefly comment on what has informed their confidence assessment. This guide can be used a framework to structure this commentary.
All of the DCA factors should be considered at each stage of a project, but not all DCA factors should be considered equal at every stage of a project.
For example, Transformation Vision and Purpose should be assessed throughout the project, not just at the start.
Inability to articulate a clear purpose for a project in terms of its business value and benefits might warrant an overall DCA red rating, despite other factors being green.
A lack of awareness or control over inter-agency system dependencies on a multi-agency project with a tight delivery schedule might warrant a rating of low confidence despite strength in other areas. Similarly, low supplier capability or capacity could warrant a low DCA if coupled with low in-house capability.
It is also anticipated that delivery confidence will change throughout the project. For example, when working with any but very familiar technologies, it could be difficult to justify high confidence against schedule and cost until the later stages of a project, especially given the frequency of over-time and over-budget projects.
The relevance of some elements will also vary based on whether the delivery team are using an agile, hybrid or waterfall approach for delivery. For example, while agile approaches may tend to de-emphasise up-front planning, this can be problematic in large projects with many interdependencies.
Digital projects are both highly context dependant and vary significantly based on the degree of digital transformation they entail.
Finally, it is possible that the project status reporting indicates a DCA rating that is different to the DCA delivered by the assurance activity. This could happen when the assurance report reveals a mismatch between project documentation informing assurance and the active risks and issues that are manifesting in the project.
If an assurer considers some DCA factors to not be relevant given the project type or stage, they should note the areas they are excluding and their rationale for this.
Consequently, while this document may provide a guide, any DCA rating must rest on the expertise and discretionary judgment of the independent assurance provider.