1) I think that the term “hand it over” implies that the process owner was not intimately involved with the improvement. Transitioning through the control phase should be seamless. The process owner still owns the process during the improvement phase, and so is involved with the improvements. I hope that I’m picking on semantics, and that this is not really a distinct “hand-off”. That could be part of the problem.

2) The Focus Group also sounds like it is not involved with the project from day 1. It is was, the transition would again be seamless, and there then might be no misunderstanding between compliance and control. It also sounds like the Focus Group is not connected to the process that was improved, because if it was, the Group would be aware of any additional improvements and take that into consideration during the assessment.

Basically, I think that the Focus Group is to disconnected from all of the processes and from the improvement process itself to be effective. Sounds like “Seagull Management”.