IT Project Data Elements
UF IT has a managed project list. Here we define the data elements for each enterprise IT project.
Title
Short, descriptive, non-technical. 3-10 words. Written for those not involved with the project.
Description
2-3 sentences for when the title is not enough. Intended for wide audience.
Sponsor[1].
A sponsor is the person or group that provides the financial resources, in cash or in kind, for the project. When a project is first conceived, the sponsor champions the project. This includes serving as spokesperson to higher levels of management to gather support throughout the organization and promote the benefits that the project will bring. The sponsor leads the project through the engagement or selection process until formally authorized, and plays a significant role in the development of the initial scope and charter.
For issues that are beyond the control of the project manager, the sponsor serves as an escalation path. The sponsor may also be involved in other important issues such as authorizing changes in scope, phase-end reviews, and go/no-go decisions when risks are particularly high.
Project manager[2].
Project managers are assigned by the performing organization to achieve the project objectives. This is a challenging, high-profile role with significant responsibility and shifting priorities. It requires flexibility, good judgment, strong leadership and negotiating skills, and a solid knowledge of project management practices. A project manager must be able to understand project detail, but manage from the overall project perspective. As the person responsible for the success of the project, a project manager is in charge of all aspects of the project including, but not limited to:
- Developing the project management plan and all related component plans,
- Keeping the project on track in terms of schedule and budget,
- Identifying, monitoring, and responding to risk, and
- Providing accurate and timely reporting of project metrics.
Project organization
The unit of the university responsible for coordinating the project. Typically, the assigned project manager works in the project organization. The University often refers to the project organization as the unit "doing" the project. In fact, many projects are cross-departmental in scope, involving staff and managers, faculty and students from more than one organization.
Priority
- High priority projects are those projects which will command resources from other projects as needed.
- Medium priority projects are neither high, nor low. Most enterprise IT projects are medium priority.
- Low priority projects only move forward when high and medium projects do not require resources. For this reason, most low priority projects make little progress.
Status
Indicates the path of a project from beginning to end. Some projects are considered, but never started. Some projects are started but never finished.
- Proposed projects are in various stages of discussion. No work has been done, and in general a formal charter does not yet exist.
- Forecasted projects are those for which general agreement has been expected or is expected for project start. Managers are working to identify resources and establish timelines for the work. Work has not started.
- In Progress projects are underway. People are actively working to complete the projects.
- On hold projects are not making progress. Typical reasons are resource contention and projects awaiting decisions.
- Canceled projects are no longer being worked. They will not be completed.
- Completed projects are finished. The service has been created or improved and any subsequent work is operational or a new project.
Customer/user
The customers/users are the persons or organizations that will use the project's product or service or result. Customers/users may be internal and/or external to the performing organization. There may also be multiple layers of customers. For example, the customers for a new pharmaceutical product can include the doctors who prescribe it, the patients who use it, and the insurers who pay for it. In some application areas, customers and users are synonymous, while in others, customers refer to the entity acquiring the project's product, and users refer to those who will directly utilize the project's product.[3]
Start date
Date the work began. In the eight-step change model[4], the work begins once the charter is accepted by the sponsor. Empty for projects that have not yet started.
End date
Date work ended—project was either canceled or completed. Empty for projects that are in progress or on hold.
Go-live date
For some projects is it very important to know when the work will impact the customers. For projects with multiple go-live dates, the value here represents the next go-live date for the project.
Purpose
Purpose indicates why we are doing the work. Commonly we are creating or enhancing a service. But we have other project purposes.
- Create Service projects make new things.
- Enhance service projects take an existing service and make it better.
- Maintain service projects provide effort to insure that the service continues to run as expected. Software upgrades, application patching, infrastructure capacity projects, infrastructure refresh projects are all examples of maintenance projects.
- Strategy projects determine how best to approach particular problems. Should we buy or build? Should we outsource a service. Should consolidate, integrate, extend or otherwise modify existing services to meet a need. Architecture projects are typically strategy projects.
- Sunset projects provide a means for ending a particular service, simplifying the environment and possibly lowering costs of operation. Typically accommodations are made in another service, artifacts of the sunsetted service may be preserved.
- Improve Governance projects organize people and ideas to improve our ability to allocate resources, prioritize projects, establish principles and develop policy and procedure.
- Improve Security projects typically cut across a variety of services to improve our ability to protect our resources.
Impact
Describes the change required by the university community.
- High Impact projects require large numbers of people to make required changes in the way they do their work. An example would be the Student Financials system implementation. All students, parents, and seventeen departments providing charges were required to change. Typically a training program and/or significant communication plan are required for large impact projects.
- Medium Impact projects require smaller, defined group of people (typically less than 100) to make changes. Changes that impact specific departments are often medium impact projects.
- Low Impact projects are those that do not require people to change their practices. Most new web sites, projects that provide additional non-required features to existing services might be considered low impact.
Effort/cost
An estimate of the total cost of the work including man power and all other expenses. Man power can roughly be calculated at $1700 per man week.
- Large projects are over $1M in effort/cost.
- Medium Projects are between $20K and $1M in cost.
- Small projects are below $20K in cost (3 man months of effort, no additional expenses).
Value
Indicates the value to the University of the project's result. This is typically asserted by the project sponsor and validated by the IT governance process.
- High value projects create fundamental improvements in the University's competitive position—in our ability to attract and retain faculty, staff, students; in our ability to grow our revenue—research dollars, gifts, clinical, tuition; in our ability to lower our cost of operations.
- Medium value projects improve the university's ability to get its work done and/or manage its assets.
- Low value projects make incremental improvements in the quality of life and business processes of the university community.
- Very low projects serve a particular department or individual with minimal value to the university at large.
Risk
When projects fail, there can be multiple consequences—resources are wasted, publicity can be negative and operations can be disrupted. Risk is measured by multiplying the value of the damage resulting from a failure times the probability of the failure.
- Very high risk projects are those which have a high probability of failure (due to poor requirements, inadequate resources, and/or unrealistic time constraints) and/or a extraordinary potential damage to the university if the project goes poorly. The entire University could be damaged as a result.
- High risk projects are those that involve fundamental services, changes in the handling of restricted data and/or involve methods which have a high probability of failure.
- Medium risk projects have some probability of failure and/or some potential damage. Most projects involving the ERP systems would be medium risk—operational disruption can occur unless projects are carefully managed.
- Low risk projects are those with high certainty to succeed or present little possibility of damage. Creating new information web sites would typically be low risk projects.
Operational cost
Once the project is completed, have operations been simplified, made more complex or have operations stayed about the same. Many projects create new services that increase our operational burden. We are concerned here with total operational costs to the University. If a project increases IT costs, while decreasing costs elsewhere so that the total operational cost to the university goes does, the bottom line for the project is that it decreases operational costs.
- Increase. Projects that increase operational costs. Most new services increase operational costs, unless older services are removed or replaced as a result.
- Stay the same. Some projects add features or otherwise have a net zero impact on operations.
- Decrease. Some projects decrease operational costs.
Operational risk
Once a project is complete, the service must be operated. In some cases, a new or improved service will present increased operational risk—additional restricted data must be maintained, or the service presents opportunities for misuse.
- Increase. The result of the project will be an increase in operational risk.
- Stay the same. The project will have limited change in operational risk.
- Decrease. The project will decrease operational risk.
Service
The service being created or improved by the project.
Footnotes
1. From the Project Management Book of Knowledge. Back to text.
2. Ibid. Back to text.
3. Ibid. Back to text.
4. American Society for Training and Development. Back to text.
