A dedicated project assurance manager is proposed for large and complex projects to enhance the quality of project delivery. This role decouples quality oversight from time, cost, and scope considerations, addressing the inherent conflict of interest when these responsibilities reside solely with the Project Manager. By separating these functions, the Project Assurance Manager can prioritise the integrity and quality of project outputs, thereby enhancing overall project success.

Role Overview

The Project Assurance Manager enhances quality management practices by focusing on strategic and operational aspects directly influencing project success. This role decouples quality oversight from time, cost, and scope considerations, addressing potential conflicts of interest when these responsibilities reside solely with the Project Manager. By separating these functions, the Project Assurance Manager prioritises the integrity and quality of project outputs, thereby increasing the likelihood of overall project success.

Proposed Shift in Accountabilities and Responsibilities

The Project Assurance Manager takes on key responsibilities essential for successfully delivering enterprise IT projects. These include:

• Defining project roles and skills: Responsible for recruiting project participants and continuously assessing their suitability. This starts with creating frameworks to determine resource and skill requirements and clearly defining roles to ensure all team members understand their responsibilities in achieving quality outputs.
• Establishing the project approach: The Project Assurance Manager defines the delivery model, organisational structure, and team guiding principles. This includes outlining project outputs, creating documentation guidelines, and allocating deliverables to specific roles. Continuous quality assessments at each project stage ensure adherence to operational quality management.
• Providing support tools: Ensures the availability of applications, tools, and templates tailored to the project's specific needs, aligning technology with the strategic and operational objectives of quality management.
• Monitoring compliance and best practices: Continuously monitors project execution to ensure adherence to established frameworks and industry best practices, facilitating consistent and effective project delivery.
• Quality control of deliverables: Implements continuous quality assessments at each project stage to ensure that every output meets set standards before acceptance.
• Resource assessment: Evaluates team performance against the skills claimed during recruitment, focusing on the quality of deliverables produced and ensuring team members effectively fulfil their roles. Independent quality reporting: Provides unbiased reports to the project board regarding the project's quality aspects, focusing solely on quality without the constraints of managing time and cost. By shifting these accountabilities and responsibilities to a 

By shifting these accountabilities and responsibilities to a dedicated Project Assurance Manager, projects can achieve greater alignment with organisational goals while ensuring high-quality deliverables.

Table 26 outlines the proposed transfer of responsibilities from the PMO and Project Manager to the Project Assurance Manager. This strategic realignment is designed to enhance project oversight by tailoring roles and responsibilities to better meet each project's unique demands. The table illustrates how traditional responsibilities are adapted to improve quality in project execution.