MHA Management · The method
The operating system
for delivery.
Five sequential phases. Four always-on practices that span all of them. One artifact set we hand off at close. Below: the full procedure, with the failure modes each phase is shaped to prevent.
- 01 Discover
- 02 Shape
- 03 Plan
- 04 Run
- 05 Close
The principle
Projects fail predictably.
The method exists to prevent the predictable.
Most project failures are not the result of bad luck, bad talent, or unforeseeable events. They're the result of skipped phases, missing decisions, untracked risks, and assumptions that were never written down. The failures are predictable; the rigor that prevents them is dull, structural, and works.
The five phases below are non-optional in MHA engagements. They scale with the project — a two-week scope receives a half-day Discover; a year-long programme receives a multi-week one — but they don't get skipped. The four always-on practices (governance, risk register, status cadence, documentation) run from kickoff to close. They are not a phase; they are the spine.
The five phases
Sequenced. Detailed. Never skipped.
Discover
Surface the problem, the people, and the constraints — before scope freezes.
What happens
- Structured interviews with the sponsor, primary stakeholders, and any party who will be affected by the engagement.
- Site walk-through, code audit, or programme review (whichever applies). On-site or in-system, in person.
- A pre-mortem session: a 30-minute exercise that surfaces the failure modes the team privately suspects but won't write in a register.
- Mapping of explicit and implicit constraints — financial, regulatory, schedule, organisational, technical.
Why it matters
Most project failures are seeded here, in the gap between what the sponsor said they wanted and what they actually meant. The Discover phase exists to close that gap while it's still cheap to close. By the time Plan is drafted, the surprises should already be on paper.
Deliverables
- Engagement brief (one page, signed)
- Stakeholder map with decision authority
- Constraint register (financial / regulatory / schedule / other)
- Pre-mortem output: ranked failure modes with proposed responses
Shape
Define what's in, what's out, what success looks like, and how we'll work together.
What happens
- Convert the Discover outputs into a working scope: objectives, in/out of scope, deliverables, engagement model.
- Five-question pressure test on the scope (success criterion, exclusions, authority, worst-still-glad outcome, the bet).
- Engagement model agreed: fixed fee vs time-and-materials vs outcome-based, change-order process, decision rights.
- Kickoff: scope frozen, baseline communicated, plan phase initiated.
Why it matters
The Shape phase is where the engagement's *theory of the case* gets written down. Without it, every later decision is litigated against unstated assumptions. With it, the team has a shared definition of done — and a defensible answer to 'is this in scope?' six months from now.
Deliverables
- Scope document (one page, signed) including named exclusions
- Engagement model + change-order process
- Decision-rights matrix (who can say yes to what)
- Kickoff record + signed baseline
Plan
A plan precise enough to execute against, and honest enough to revise.
What happens
- Work breakdown to the level of weekly deliverables.
- Schedule with named milestones, dependencies, and float; budget mapped to the schedule.
- Risk register populated using the five-column format: risk, owner, trigger, response, status. Triggers are observable, not abstract.
- Vendor selection and contracting (where the engagement requires external parties). Single ownership for each vendor relationship.
Why it matters
A plan with no specified triggers is theatre. A plan with no honest float is fiction. The Plan phase exists to produce a document precise enough to detect deviation in week three, not just at the deadline. Most of the planning effort goes into making revision cheap — because revision is inevitable.
Deliverables
- Schedule (Gantt or equivalent) with milestones + dependencies
- Budget by phase + by line item, mapped to the schedule
- Risk register (live document, five-column format)
- Vendor contracts + single point of accountability per vendor
Run
Execute, observe, report, adjust — every week, in writing, with no surprises that should have been seen.
What happens
- Execute the plan against the weekly schedule. MHA lead holds the schedule and the risks; vendors hold their commitments.
- Observe: each week, every open risk's trigger is checked; the schedule is walked; the budget is reconciled.
- Report: weekly written one-page status, sent 24 hours before the weekly call. Five sections, three colour states, operationalised.
- Adjust: triggered risks become issues; plan changes become change orders; status colour flips with explicit 'what changed' notes.
Why it matters
The Run phase is where method earns its keep. The discipline is the weekly cadence: nothing is allowed to drift unobserved for more than seven days. The aim is not to prevent every surprise — it's to ensure no surprise lands without the status report that *should have* flagged it being identifiable in hindsight.
Deliverables
- Weekly written status (durable artifact, archived)
- Live risk register (state synced with status each week)
- Issues log (separate from risks, for things that have fired)
- Change orders for any deviation from the signed scope
Close
Deliver. Hand off the eight artifacts. Leave the client able to operate without us.
What happens
- Final deliverable inspection and sign-off against the Shape-phase success criterion.
- Production of the eight handoff artifacts (deliverable inventory, decisions log, final risk register, lessons learned, vendor index, runbook, outstanding-items list, financial report).
- Knowledge transfer session with the receiving team.
- Engagement close with the sponsor: explicit, dated, with a one-line 'what we'd do differently next time'.
Why it matters
An engagement ends when the client has everything they need to operate the result without us. Not before. The Close phase is the difference between leaving a working asset and leaving a fragile one — between a client who recommends us and a client who privately resents the gap they discovered six weeks later.
Deliverables
- Eight handoff artifacts (see diagram opposite)
- Final deliverable sign-off (signed)
- Knowledge-transfer session record
- Engagement-close memo with lessons learned
The four always-on practices
Continuous tracks that run alongside every phase.
These four are not phases. They begin at engagement start and end at engagement close. They are the spine that holds the phases together — the reason a status in week 17 reconciles cleanly with a decision made in week 3.
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Governance
Decision rights, in writing.
Who can approve a change up to $X, who can approve above it, and who breaks a tie. Written into the kickoff document. The single most common cause of stalled engagements is unclear decision authority; we close it in week one.
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Risk register
Five columns. Triggers, not categories.
Risk, owner, trigger, response, status. Eight to fifteen rows for a six-month engagement, walked through weekly with the sponsor, reconciled with the status report by construction. Full practice notes →
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Status cadence
Weekly. Written. One page. No exceptions.
Five-section template, three colour states with operational definitions, sent 24 hours before the weekly call so the call can be about decisions rather than the report. Full practice notes →
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Documentation
Built throughout. Not assembled at the end.
Each phase produces its named deliverables in-flight, not as a close-phase scramble. By the time we reach Close, seven of the eight handoff artifacts already exist; the eighth is the financial reconciliation that can only be done at the end.
Want the practice-level detail?
The method is the spine.
The practices are how we run it.
Each phase has a small number of specific practices we apply. The insights below are the deepest treatment — process, templates, operational rules — for the ones that most often determine whether an engagement succeeds.
Have a project to run through the method?
Tell us about it. Even a single phase — a properly run Discover, a recovered Run — can change the trajectory.