Project process update; project close
by Peter Mosinskis, Director of IT Strategy in assessment, closure, evaluation, process, project close 0
On June 16, the A&IT management team met to assess the project management and project portfolio processes and tools that were put into action earlier this year. June marks the completion of the first 6 months of our new project and portfolio management program.
One of the outcomes of the meeting was a SWOT analysis. Here are some of the strengths that the team noted:
- Documented, defined process for projects
- Improved communication about projects
- Improved ability for capacity planning
- Focused responsibility on managing the project portfolio
- Improved ability to bill back for cost-recovery activities
- We have data and history we can use; they can be used for assessment & continuous improvement
The team identified some weaknesses as well:
- Visibility of project information could be improved
- Project classification system needs to be further refined (or re-defined)
- No electronic forms or workflow; as a result, sometimes project approval takes too long.
- Our project repository in SharePoint has not been fully developed to support our project & portfolio activities
- The tools in our project toolbox are not tied together
- Aggregating data from "electronic paper" forms is cumbersome
- Some employees perceive that data from project and time on task activities aren't being used, and are skeptical about the process and information.
By building on the process strengths and addressing the weaknesses, our organization has an opportunity to further improve communication, reduce the amount of time require to complete a project, improve our strategic planning capabilities, and use our project management expertise as a model for other campus organizations to use.
We are continuing to build on our strengths by launching our new Business Practice on Project Close (BP-00-008) today, which provides project managers and leads with a more consistent way to close projects and to communicate about their closure with our clients. Our new project closure and project cancellation forms will enable us to document key project statistics and lessons learned at the close of every project to enable continuous improvement of our project management capabilities. The process and forms have been distributed to all A&IT staff, and will be available shortly on the A&IT Policy & Procedures web site.
In addition, we are revising our project intake process and project charter form to address project classification issues raised by the group. We expect those changes to be approved and made available in the next 2 weeks.
