Archive for December 2010

Project intake presentation video

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A presentation about A&IT's new project intake process was made to the IT Policy and Planning Committee (ITPPC) last Thursday.

A narrated, captioned recording of the presentation is now available:

View the Project Management update for December 2010 (about 12 minutes)

The slides are also available for download.

As a reminder, A&IT clients can now submit new project requests via the A&IT Project Request Form

Feel free to share these links with your colleagues, and let us know if you have any questions!


What is a project?

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Seems like this is a simple question, but the answer forms the basis for our entire project management process and activities.

From our perspective, a project is:

A temporary endeavor undertaken to create or update a unique product, service, or result. In particular, a project in A&IT is undertaken to create a new service that has not existed before.
Projects can be small or large, simple or complex, with focused or wide-ranging impact.

Projects are not operations. The difference is:
  • Projects have a defined start and end, operations are ongoing with definitive start or end
  • Projects create unique product/outcome, where operations typically produce the same outcomes
  • A project will contain a group of activities that requires 10 or more hours of A&IT staff time to complete, where operations typically are completed in less than 10 hours. 
Learn more about our definition of what a project is and our project intake process on the A&IT Projects web site.


Project intake process goes live

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Over the past few months, we've been working on formalizing our process for taking in new projects.

This is the first element in any project management business process, and probably the most important. Project risk is always highest at the beginning of the project, so making sure that the project intake process is thoughtful and useful can help reduce that risk.

So how does the process work? In a nutshell:

  1. A client submits a  project request
  2. A&IT staff are assigned to that request
  3. A&IT staff gather high-level project information, and assemble a Project Charter
  4. The project is given initial approval by the client & A&IT.
  5. The project charter information is archived and published in our Project Repository and added to our Project Calendar.
We've tried to keep the process as light as possible:
  1. Small projects only need the assigned A&IT manager's approval to continue
  2. Medium & large projects will need the CIO's approval


In addition, you can read about our complete business practice for project intake in MS Word format (to view, download Microsoft Office).

In the next few months, we'll make both the Project Repository and Project Calendar available to the public; they are both currently stored in our internal SharePoint instance.