Rice PMO Community of Practice Brief Overview of Project Management

Rice PMO Community of Practice Brief Overview of Project Management October, 2019

Purpose and Agenda Purpose: The purpose of today’s brown bag is to hold an interactive discussion on project management and how project management is used in your organization. Agenda: Introductions Benefits of a Project and a PMO What is Governance? Types of Approved Projects Key Project Management Processes and Tools Project Management Methodologies Agile Example: Service Teams Reporting (monday.com) A PM Best Practice: Lessons Learned Future Topics? Appendix: Draft Prioritization Criteria 2

Benefits of a Project and a PMO Project C Project B Project A Project D Project E PMO Confirm alignment with Rice strategy Better governance and control Improve collaboration and team work Improve resource management Faster value delivery Reduce risks (Security, integration, change management, etc.) Consistent way to manage projects Standardized methodologies, processes, tools & techniques 3

What is Governance? Governance refers to the process of project request, prioritization, and approval as part of a broader portfolio. The starting point is an intake form for projects. OIT leadership is currently reviewing the intake process for opportunities to improvement. Value of project intake: Agree with customers on project delivery dates and priorities Understand dependencies and risks Examine potential resource impact of projects that are requested Track projects that are requested over time Guide the customer in next steps in the process Ideation Assessment Approve for assessment IT Subcommittees Rice Evaluation Process Departments OIT Strategies Compliance Decision Project request review by governance committee University or Operational Priority Competitive Advantage Organizational Readiness Synergy with ERP Progress Reporting Approve for implementation Defer Good Ideas 4

Types of Approved Projects A project is a temporary endeavor designed to produce a unique product, service or result. All projects should go through an assessment and requirements analysis. An assessment: Duration may vary Requires resources from more than one OIT department Requires engagement from the business May require consultants Implementation funding not confirmed - vs An implementation project: Includes an assessment Requires more than 3 months of effort Requires resources from more than one OIT department Requires engagement from the business Will result in process change and/or organizational change Is scoped and funded 5

Project Management Processes and Tools Project request is submitted Approval Statuses Waiting for Review Approved Deferred Rejected Approved 1. 2. Monday . com Status Initiate Phase Documen tation and activities to complete phase Not Started Started (resources assigned) Project request Scope Approved budget Milestones and planned deliverables Identification of risks In Progress On Hold Canceled Define Requirements approved RFP Assessments: o Security o Ent Arch o Legal o Procurement o Accessibility Design Product design Rollout / communications & change management plan Develop Update schedule / milestones Deploy Test results KB article Help desk training CAB approval Training documentation Training sessions (in person) if applicable Complete Close Approval to close / transition to product support Uploaded documentation Lessons Learned * EA, Security, and Legal assessments should begin when selection has narrowed to 2-3 finalists. Procurement engagement can begin earlier. Project best practices: Take notes and store in a centralized location: identify a note-taker or crowd-source Set your agendas and hold effective meetings 6

Project Management Methodologies Even for large projects, many vendors now use a waterfall approach that incorporates Agile concepts, such as speed-to-market, MVP, and iterative cycles. Waterfall Traditional design / build / test / deploy model Released as a finished product Often used for system development with heavy up-front planning and the end product is well defined Broader, more distributed team Agile Executed as a series of small tasks Iterative development and release cycle Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Often used in software development Vocabulary: Scrum, Sprint, Scrum Master Heavy customer involvement and small dedicated team 7

Agile Example: Service Teams Characteristics: Regular (eg quarterly) release cadence Backlog review Annual service update Establish scope of work Internal request Review: Submit request into queue (backlog) for review and prioritization Responsible Customer Yes Current activities New request queue Reprioritize as needed External request Fit with roadmap ? Confirm resource availability with managers for resources not on the team Confirm budget availability No Archive request Communicate status to customer (provide link) Service Team Owner / Manager Assign activities to responsible team member – “The Pr omise”: Deliverable due date Solution delivery date (release cycle) Update activity status / dependency Create automated reminders to complete work Communicate quarterly release functionality Receive CAB approval Update service architecture model Assigned Team Member 8

Reporting (Monday.com) Monday.com is a cloud-based task tracking solution that was selected for ease of use. Information is organized into “boards” with three levels of access: 1) member, 2) guest, and 3) view-only. Key departmental, cross-functional, and strategic projects are now being tracked in the tool for status visibility. You can see the lasts status on the OIT Staff Confluence page: https:// docs.rice.edu/confluence/display/OAS/Project Updates – the view is automatically updated when the project is updated, so you can always see the latest in-progress projects. A monthly Monday.com user group has begun meeting to discuss functionality updates and identify opportunities to improve usability of the tool. Team I&O Admin Systems Student Services Learning Environments Board View I&O Board Admin Systems Student Services Learning Environments IAM IAM CRC CRC ISO ISO BI TBD (currently in JIRA) 9

A PM Best Practice: Lessons Learned A “lessons learned” session is an opportunity to improve on your project management skills following a major implementation. This activity works best by gathering all key stakeholders (OIT, customers, vendors) to reflect on each phase of the project and capturing feedback on: Effectiveness of the project process Engagement of Rice stakeholder groups Challenges you faced What worked and what didn’t work in project execution Considerations for future organizational initiatives or in additional phases Comments should be professional and add to the conversation. This is meant to be a learning exercise. Members of the PMO are happy to help you facilitate a lessons learned session. 10

Future Topics? Effective communications / notes / agendas 11

Appendix: Draft Prioritization Criteria Criteria Priority Provides a Competitive Advantage Ranking 15 - Critical priority 10 - Strategic priority 5 - Departmental priority 1 - Proactive project 10 - Earns revenue / enhance Rice reputation 5 - Bring Rice in line with market / cost avoidance 1 - Cost of doing business 10 - Leadership commits resources / funding / partnership with another department Organizational Readiness 5 - Some buy-in but capacity / alignment inconsistent among impacted stakeholders 1 - No cohesive support by impacted stakeholders Synergy With Proposed New ERP System 10 – Unlikely to be impacted by ERP or supporting technology for ERP 5 – Compelling exceptions 1 - Potential resource conflict with ERP Priority Definitions Critical priority Needed to sustain critical business functionality Prevents significant degradation or loss of existing service Needed for regulatory compliance Addresses security issue Strategic priority Related to a Presidential Initiative or other executive priority Addresses critical functionality gap Additional funding to complete active project Enabling project (work that enables higher priority efforts to continue) Departmental priority Addresses/resolves high level of customer complaints Mitigates significant risk by adding fault tolerance, eliminating a point of failure, or adding redundancy to a critical area Provides enhanced level of service or new service that is now expected as part of basic services Proactive project Prevent/identify possible future issues Nice to do while a related initiative is in progress Can be deferred but should be done eventually 12