Catalogue › Value Realisation › post-implementation-review

Post-implementation review

Runs a post-implementation review an agreed period after an AI solution or programme goes live, comparing actual outcomes, costs, adoption, quality and risk with the approved case, explaining each variance, capturing lessons and agreeing actions for benefits still to come. Use when a live solution reaches its review date, when a funding body asks whether the case was delivered, or when lessons should improve how future cases are estimated.

Department

Value Realisation

Lifecycle

Measure, Scale, Improve

Maturity

adopter, builder, scaler, ai-enterprise

Risk tiers

0, 1, 2, 3, 4

Platforms

platform-neutral

Editions

starter, scale, enterprise

Reviewers

none

Status

draft

Copilot Cowork

Value Realisation plugin for Copilot Cowork, or this skill on its own: Download SKILL.md

Licence

CC BY 4.0, by Simon Foote

Purpose

The post-implementation review is where the organisation finds out whether an AI investment delivered what was promised, and why or why not. This skill runs that review a set period after go-live: it compares outcomes, costs, adoption, quality and risk with the approved case, explains the variances, records lessons that change how future cases are estimated and delivered, and agrees what happens to the benefits still to come. It goes wrong when the review is skipped once the team has moved on, when it becomes a celebration or a blame session, and when its lessons are filed and never used.

When to use

• A live AI solution, Copilot rollout or programme reaches the review date set in its realisation plan.
• A funding body, board or audit asks whether an approved case was delivered.
• A solution has been live for some time and nobody has compared results with the case.
• The organisation wants to calibrate future value estimates against past results.
• A major change to the solution or its scope is proposed and the current position needs establishing first.

When not to use

• Deciding whether a pilot should scale, iterate, pivot or stop - use opportunity-management:scale-or-stop.
• Running scheduled operational reviews of every live solution - use ai-operations:ai-review-calendar.
• Assessing overall programme health and corrective action - use programme-management:programme-health.
• Re-running quality evaluation after a change - use evaluation-quality:regression-evaluation.
• Reviewing the portfolio of live solutions as a whole - use ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-portfolio-management.

Questions to ask first

1. What exactly was approved: which case, which benefits, which costs, which risks and which dates?
2. Is enough time past go-live for the benefits to have appeared, given the timing in the realisation plan?
3. What evidence exists for each benefit, cost and risk, and at what confidence?
4. Who needs to be in the review, and who will act on its findings?
5. What decision, if any, does the review need to support (continue, extend, change, retire, release funding)?

Required inputs

• The approved case and the ROI model as approved, from opportunity-management:business-case or ai-strategy:investment-case and value-realisation:roi-model.
• The benefits register entries with baselines, targets, owners and measured results.
• Actual costs from finance and the programme, including run and support costs.
• Adoption, quality and incident evidence for the period, at team or role level.
• Any earlier scale-or-stop record or change decisions.

Where evidence for a line is missing, record it as unevidenced rather than estimating it in the meeting. A benefit with no evidence is reported as not demonstrated, with the reason, not as achieved.

Decision framework

Compare each element of the case with the evidence and classify the variance.

Practitioner approach

Schedule the review when the case is approved, not when someone remembers. The realisation plan sets the date at the point benefits should be visible, typically after adoption has settled; reviewing too early finds nothing and reviewing too late finds nobody who remembers why decisions were made.

Prepare the evidence before the meeting. The Benefits Realisation Lead assembles a pack: the case as approved, the register entries, measured results with their confidence, actual costs, adoption and quality evidence, and incidents. Circulate it in advance so the meeting discusses causes, not figures. Use the post-implementation-review-report template so reviews are comparable across the portfolio.

Run the review as a learning conversation. Bring the benefit owners, the solution owner, finance, the CoE and someone who supported users. Walk each element against the evidence and classify the variance. For every variance, ask why, and keep asking until the cause is something the organisation could change: an adoption assumption that was too optimistic, a process change nobody made, knowledge that was not maintained, review effort that was not modelled. Variances in both directions deserve explanation; unexplained over-achievement is as unreliable as under-achievement.

Separate the solution from the case. A solution may work well while the case was wrong, or the case may have been sound while delivery fell short. Recording which applies stops the organisation from drawing the wrong lesson, such as abandoning a pattern that would work with a better estimate.

Agree actions for benefits still to come. Some will need re-profiling, some corrective action, and some should be retired honestly. Where the case no longer holds, say so and re-baseline it openly with the sponsor; quietly carrying unachievable benefits forward damages every later report.

Capture lessons in a form people will use. Two kinds matter most: estimation lessons (which assumptions were wrong and by how much) and delivery lessons (what made realisation easier or harder). Feed estimation lessons into the ROI model conventions and the value hypothesis guidance, and delivery lessons into the CoE's playbooks.

Finally, publish a short summary. Sharing results, including disappointing ones, builds credibility for the next case and shows that the organisation measures honestly. Report at team, role or solution level only, never by individual.

Outputs

• A post-implementation review report on the post-implementation-review-report template: case as approved, evidence, variance by element and class, causes, actions and lessons.
• Updated benefits-register entries with variance classes, re-profiled dates and retired benefits.
• An estimated-versus-actual comparison for the ROI model.
• A lessons log routed to the owners of estimation and delivery practice.
• A short summary suitable for wider sharing.

Microsoft platform considerations

Product capability may have changed since the case was approved, for better or worse. Where a variance depends on a feature, licence or limit, check the current position in references/sources.md rather than relying on what was assumed at approval, and record what has changed.

Adoption considerations

Adoption shortfalls are the commonest cause of benefit variance. Read adoption at team or role level and look at whether use was sustained, and route causes to the adoption lead as programme actions rather than as criticism of teams.

Knowledge considerations

Check whether the knowledge the solution depends on was maintained as planned. Knowledge decay is a frequent hidden cause of falling quality and benefits, and it is fixable once named.

Security and privacy considerations

Review any security or privacy incidents in the period and whether controls worked as intended. Evidence packs must not contain personal data beyond what the review needs; use aggregated figures.

Responsible AI considerations

For solutions that inform decisions about people, review whether human oversight operated as designed and whether any harm or complaint arose. Findings go to responsible-ai:ai-impact-assessment for the solution's next review.

Evaluation requirements

Compare live quality with the release evaluation threshold. If live quality has drifted, record it as a quality variance and request re-evaluation through the solution's evaluation owner.

Value measures

Success is the share of approved cases reviewed on schedule, the share of benefits with an evidenced variance class, and whether the gap between estimated and actual value narrows across successive reviews, tracked by the Benefits Realisation Lead.

Scale notes

Starter

A single short review meeting with the business owner and whoever leads AI, a one-page report, and one or two lessons written down and shared.

Scale

Scheduled reviews for every initiative above a size or risk threshold, a standard evidence pack, finance participation, and lessons fed into the value review.

Enterprise

A portfolio programme of reviews with independent facilitation for major investments, calibration of estimation conventions from accumulated results, and an annual summary to the executive.

Hand-offs

• To opportunity-management:scale-or-stop where the review raises a decision about the solution's future.
• To value-realisation:benefit-realisation-plan with re-profiled and retired benefits.
• To value-realisation:roi-model and opportunity-management:value-hypothesis with estimation lessons.
• To ai-operations:ai-solution-retirement where the review concludes the solution should be retired.

Reviewer gates

Not applicable as a release gate, because a post-implementation review looks back at a live solution. Where it finds unresolved risk or harm for a tier 2 or above solution, the finding is referred to responsible-ai or security-privacy as appropriate.

Failure modes

• The review never happens because the delivery team has moved on and nobody owns the date.
• Figures are debated in the meeting because the evidence pack was not prepared, and no causes are found.
• Over-achievement is celebrated without explanation, and an unreliable figure becomes the next case's assumption.
• Unachievable benefits are carried forward rather than re-baselined, and credibility drains away.
• Lessons are recorded and never reach the people who write the next case.

Sources

references/sources.md in this skill lists the source records behind this skill, what each is authoritative for, how volatile it is and what you may do with it. Product availability, licensing, limits and preview status change often, so check the current source before stating them, and cite what you used.

Never

• Report a benefit as achieved without adequate evidence.
• Use the review to assign blame to individuals or report their usage.
• Quietly re-baseline a case without the sponsor's agreement and a record of why.
• Skip the review because results are expected to be disappointing.