ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of project reviews, then, is to ground people in reality. By providing clear and independently validated information to project stakeholders, reviews help people avoid cognitive biases and information bottlenecks. Review and assurance teams are also well placed to help connect projects to wider organizational objectives. Summative evaluations focus on making external decisions about the project. This classification focuses on when the review happens in the project lifecycle, with some attention to the degree of independence of the reviewers. The attributes being reviewed may influence the composition of the review team and other aspects of the review. Assurance focuses on whether the project is likely to succeed, and what can be done to help it succeed. In order to do this, it looks at processes and their alignment to good practice, but may also range more widely across other attributes of the project.
