4.22 In response to the Burton Report, GCHQ produced an Action Plan to address its recommendations. As a result GCHQ decided to manage the New Accommodation Programme under the Office of Government Commerce's programme management framework - Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) - which had just become available late in 1999. The New Accommodation Programme therefore became an early pioneer of the MSP99 framework both in GCHQ, where it was adopted as a standard for all programmes, and more widely. However, because the New Accommodation Programme is a hybrid change programme combining technical, nontechnical and behavioural challenges, it was necessary for GCHQ to develop most of the standards, processes and practice in the use of MSP99 to meet the needs of this type of programme.
4.23 GCHQ identified a portfolio of 65 projects to be managed under the Office of Government Commerce's PRINCE2 guidelines but needed to import several other management frameworks to combine them into a coherent and manageable programme. GCHQ adopted the US Military Procurement Standards to define the programme's Systems Engineering approach, the Office of Government Commerce's Information Technology Infrastructure Library for large scale Information Technology management, and the Office of Government Commerce's Gateway Review process to aid in assessing the programme's fitness to move from each phase to the next. In doing so, GCHQ identified that these frameworks overlapped imperfectly and it developed additional tools to manage the inter-project dependencies and a risk management process commensurate with the complex and significant risk profile involved. A significant challenge, which was overcome successfully, was to develop programme and project management tools and techniques to manage the combination of hard and soft projects ranging from Information Technology infrastructure design and build through to green transport management and cultural change initiatives.
4.24 GCHQ also found that the Office of Government Commerce's MSP99 framework provided little or no guidance on benefit delivery and management. To overcome this gap GCHQ has adapted the tools and techniques used for the New Accommodation Programme capability delivery to be used in the benefit delivery environment. The Programme therefore has a parallel benefit delivery environment which is planned, monitored and progressed using standard metrics and the same risk management process used for capability delivery. A systems engineering approach was used for benefit definition and the Programme benefits were derived from GCHQ's business Blueprint and mapped to business change and benefit realisation plans.