The PDRI Process

The PDRI Process

For a successful PDRI assessment, we recommend that project teams adhere to the following process:

Planning and Preparation

A well-organized meeting contributes towards achieving buy-in on the PDRI process. Ensuring the proper stakeholders attend and providing supporting reasons as to why this process will benefit them specifically is helpful in promoting participation. Ensure the meeting room and meeting logistics are organized well in advance and provide assessment material to participants ahead of the meeting.

Conducting the PDRI Assessment

The next step is to conduct the PDRI Assessment. This typically involves a neutral facilitator and co-facilitator (or scribe).
For each element, the facilitator introduces the element requirements and leads the group in objectively:
  1. discussing their progress on definition, 
  2. identifying gaps and action items, 
  3. assigning their current definition level 
A co-facilitator (scribe) captures the element definition level and documents the gaps and action items identified during the group discussion

Reviewing Assessment Results

The assessment will provide a final score indicating the level of scope definition for the project and will display this score in relation to industry benchmarks. Also, the assessment provides the data to clearly identify the elements that need more attention to improve overall scope. 

Conducting a PDRI early in front end planning (e.g. PDRI-1, end of feasibility or PDRI-2, end of concept stage) helps project teams in early team alignment on project objectives, identifying high priority project deliverables, and helping to eliminate late surprises in planning. 

A final review is recommended at the end of detailed design for all projects. The results are a key input for project sanctioning or authorization for expenditure (AFE) decisions. The final review session provides a PDRI total score that indicates the level of scope definition, list of low definition elements that remain to be addressed and action items identified by the team to be addressed.

Through this iterative process, the team will ensure the project scope is defined before proceeding to detailed design.

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