CL
Carl Lewis Technologies
IT Program Management
Information Assurance and Security
"Plan your work, and work you plan." PMI Institute
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Industry defines a project as a collaborative enterprise, involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems or work systems that are constituted by teams within or across organizations to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints
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Project Management Methodologies can differ from organization to organization. Without a clear appraoch to managing resources, capital, and processes. Projects can easily spiral out of control. A phased approach to project delivery, in accordance with Project Management Institutes best practices, allows an organization to control every aspect a project components. The benfits of Stage Gate method includes, determining the feasibility and corporate alignment, breaking down a projects costs to mitigate overruns, and selecting the proper resources to complete the project on time, and on budget.
IT Program / Project Management
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A high-level description of each phase is listed belwo. In addition, a sample timeline is provided here.
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Pre-Appraise: This is the initiation phase of the project. In this phase a feasibility report is generated, which provides management and key stakeholders vital information needed to make a sound decision on whether to move forward with a project request. In addition, the Pre-Appraise phase grants the stakeholder an opportunity to ensure that the project will fall in alignment with the strategic direction of the organization and builds on the partnership between the business unit and IT. +/- 20% cost and effort.
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Appraise: Once a prject is approved it moves into the Appraise stage. At which point the project manager engages resources to include vendors, subject matter experts, aand other billable resources. During this phase the project manager send out RFIs, RFPs and RFQs.In addition, further business requirements may be gathered as inputs into the project plan and project schedule. +/- 20% cost and effort.
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Select: RFIs, RFPs & RFQs from vendors are received and reviewed. The meeting with the stakeholders determines which vendors to select along with the solution(s) proposed. In some cases this phase is coupled with the Appraise phase to reduce redundancy in tasks and effort. +/- 15% cost and effort.
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Define:A very detailed project plan and schedule is provided to all stakeholders for a project. The Define stage officially kicks off the project and identifies key deliverables for its duration. +/- 10% cost and effort.
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Execute: Work is done. +/- 10% cost and effort.
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Operate: This phase of the project includes User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Technology is officially implemented into the environment and turned over to primary stakeholder(s) as part of the organizations IT Strategy and Business Integration. IT support, whether internal or external, is engaged for ongoing support and services.
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Close: All resources are released and the project is officially closed. The project close meeting included sharing of lessons learned, and updates to the organizational knowledge base (KBI).
Each stage of the project requires a meeting with the stakeholders to review stage deliverables, stage costs, and approval request to pass to the next stage of the project. All projects inlcude the Close stage even if the project may be cancelled for any number of reasons. This industry best practice ensures that all documentation is delivered to the stakeholders as part of the lessons learned, and that the project is officially brought to a close.