Manage all programs and projects from the investment portfolio in alignment with enterprise strategy and in a coordinated way. Initiate, plan, control, and execute programs and projects, and close with a post implementation review.
Realize business benefits and reduce the risk of unexpected delays, costs and value erosion by improving communications to and involvement of business and end users, ensuring the value and quality of project deliverables and maximizing their contribution to the investment and services portfolio.
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Maintain a Standard Approach for Program and Project Management
Maintain and enforce a standard approach to program and project management aligned to the enterprise’s specific environment and with a good practice based on a defined process and use of appropriate technology. Ensure that the approach covers the full life cycle and disciplines to be followed, including the management of scope, resources, risk, cost, quality, time, communication, stakeholder involvement, procurement, change control, integration, and benefits realization.
Update the program and project management approach based on lessons learned from its use.
Initiate a Program
Agree on program sponsorship and appoint a program board/committee with members who have a strategic interest in the program, have responsibility for the investment decision making, will be significantly impacted by the program, and will be required to enable the delivery of the change.
Confirm the program mandate with sponsors and stakeholders. Articulate the strategic objectives for the program, potential strategies for delivery, improvement, and benefits that are expected to result, and how the program fits with other initiatives.
Develop a detailed business case for a program, if warranted. Involve all key stakeholders to develop and document a complete understanding of the expected enterprise outcomes, how they will be measured, the full scope of initiatives required, the risk involved, and the impact on all aspects of the enterprise. Identify and assess alternative courses of action to achieve the desired enterprise outcomes.
Develop a benefits realization plan that will be managed throughout the program to ensure that planned benefits always have owners and are achieved, sustained, and optimized.
Prepare and submit for in-principle approval the initial (conceptual) program business case, providing essential decision-making information regarding the purpose, contribution to business objectives, the expected value created, time frames, etc.
Appoint a dedicated manager for the program, with the commensurate competencies and skills to manage the program effectively and efficiently.
Manage Stakeholder Engagement
Plan how stakeholders inside and outside the enterprise will be identified, analyzed, engaged, and managed through the life cycle of the projects.
Identify, engage, and manage stakeholders by establishing and maintaining appropriate levels of coordination, communication, and liaison to ensure that they are involved in the program/project.
Measure the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement and take remedial actions as required.
Analyze stakeholder interests and requirements.
Develop and Maintain the Program Plan
Define and document the program plan covering all projects, including what is needed to bring about changes to the enterprise; its image, products and services; business processes; people skills and numbers; relationships with stakeholders, customers, suppliers, and others; technology needs; and organizational restructuring required to achieve the program’s expected enterprise outcomes.
Specify required resources and skills to execute the project, including project managers and project teams, as well as business resources. Specify funding, cost, schedule, and inter-dependencies of multiple projects. Specify the basis for acquiring and assigning competent staff members and/or contractors to the projects. Define the roles and responsibilities for all team members and other interested parties.
Assign accountability clearly and unambiguously for each project, including achieving the benefits, controlling the costs, managing the risk, and coordinating the project activities.
Ensure that there is effective communication of program plans and progress reports amongst all projects and with the overall program. Ensure that any changes made to individual plans are reflected in the other enterprise program plans.
Maintain the program plan to ensure that it is up to date and reflects alignment with current strategic objectives, actual progress, and material changes to outcomes, benefits, costs, and risk. Have the business drive the objectives and prioritize the work throughout to ensure that the program as designed will meet enterprise requirements. Review the progress of individual projects and adjust the projects as necessary to meet scheduled milestones releases.
Update and maintain throughout the program’s economic life, the business case, and benefits register to identify and define key benefits arising from undertaking the program.
Launch and Execute the Program
Plan, resource, and commission the necessary projects required to achieve the program results based on funding review and approvals at each stage-gate review.
Establish agreed-on stages of the development process (development checkpoints). At the end of each stage, facilitate formal discussions of approved criteria with the stakeholders. After successful completion of functionality, performance, and quality reviews, and before finalizing stage activities, obtain formal approval and sign-off from all stakeholders and the sponsor/business process owner.
Undertake a benefits realization process throughout the program to ensure that planned benefits always have owners and are likely to be achieved, sustained, and optimized. Monitor benefits delivery and reports against performance targets at the stage-gate or iteration and release reviews. Perform root cause analysis for deviations from the plan and identify and address any necessary remedial actions.
Manage each program or project to ensure that decision making and delivery activities are focussed on value by achieving benefits for the business and goals in a consistent manner, addressing risk and achieving stakeholder requirements.
Set up program/project management office(s) and plan audits, quality reviews, phase/stage-gate reviews, and reviews of realized benefits.
Monitor, Control and Report on the Program Outcomes
Monitor and control the performance of the overall program and the projects within the program, including contributions of the business and IT to the projects, and report in a timely, complete, and accurate fashion. Reporting may include schedule, funding, functionality, user satisfaction, internal controls, and acceptance of accountabilities.
Monitor and control performance against enterprise and IT strategies and goals, and report to management on enterprise changes implemented, benefits realized against the benefits realization plan, and the adequacy of the benefits realization process.
Monitor and control IT services, assets, and resources created or changed as a result of the program: note implementation and in-service dates. Report to management on performance levels sustained service delivery and contribution to value.
Manage program performance against key criteria (e.g., scope, schedule, quality, benefits realization, costs, risk, velocity), identify deviations from the plan, and take timely remedial action when required.
Monitor individual project performance related to the delivery of the expected capabilities, schedule, benefits realization, costs, risk, or other metrics to identify potential impacts on program performance. Take timely remedial action when required.
Update operational IT portfolios are reflecting changes that result from the program in the relevant IT service, asset, or resource portfolios.
In accordance with stage-gate, release or iteration review criteria, undertake reviews to report on the progress of the program so that management can make go/no-go or adjustment decisions and approve further funding up to the following stage-gate, release or iteration.
Start up and Initiate Projects within a Program
To create a common understanding of project scope amongst stakeholders, provide to the stakeholders a clear written statement defining the nature, scope, and benefit of every project.
Ensure that each project has one or more sponsors with sufficient authority to manage the execution of the project within the overall program.
Ensure that key stakeholders and sponsors within the enterprise and IT agree on and accept the requirements for the project, including definition of project success (acceptance) criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Ensure that the project definition describes the requirements for a project communication plan that identifies internal and external project communications.
With the approval of stakeholders, maintain the project definition throughout the project, reflecting changing requirements.
To track the execution of a project, put in place mechanisms such as regular reporting and stage-gate, release or phase reviews in a timely manner with appropriate approval.
Plan Projects
Develop a project plan that provides information to enable management to control project progress progressively. The plan should include details of project deliverables and acceptance criteria, required internal and external resources and responsibilities, clear work breakdown structures and work packages, estimates of resources required, milestones/release plan/phases, key dependencies, and identification of a critical path.
Maintain the project plan and any dependent plans (e.g., risk plan, quality plan, benefits realization plan) to ensure that they are up to date and reflect actual progress and approved material changes.
Ensure that there is effective communication of project plans and progress reports amongst all projects and with the overall program. Ensure that any changes made to individual plans are reflected in the other plans.
Determine the activities, interdependencies, and required collaboration and communication among multiple projects within a program.
Ensure that each milestone is accompanied by a significant deliverable requiring review and sign-off.
Establish a project baseline (e.g., cost, schedule, scope, quality) that is appropriately reviewed, approved, and incorporated into the integrated project plan.
Manage Program and Project Quality
Manage Program and Project Risk
Establish a formal project risk management approach aligned with the ERM framework. Ensure that the approach includes identifying, analyzing, responding to, mitigating, monitoring, and controlling risk.
Assign to appropriately skilled personnel the responsibility for executing the enterprise’s project risk management process within a project and ensuring that this is incorporated into the solution development practices. Consider allocating this role to an independent team, especially if an objective viewpoint is required or a project is considered critical.
Perform the project risk assessment of identifying and quantifying risk continuously throughout the project. Manage and communicate risk appropriately within the project governance structure.
Reassess project risk periodically, including at initiation of each major project phase and as part of major change request assessments.
Identify owners for actions to avoid, accept, or mitigate risk.
Maintain and review a project risk register of all potential project risk and a risk mitigation log of all project issues and their resolution. Analyze the log periodically for trends and recurring problems to ensure that root causes are corrected.
Monitor and Control Projects
Establish and use a set of project criteria including, but not limited to, scope, schedule, quality, cost, and level of risk.
Measure project performance against key project performance criteria. Analyze deviations from established key project performance criteria for cause, and assess positive and negative effects on the program and its component projects.
Report to identified key stakeholders projects progress within the program, deviations from established key project performance criteria, and potential positive and negative effects on the program and its component projects.
Monitor changes to the program and review existing key project performance criteria to determine whether they still represent valid measures of progress.
Document and submit any necessary changes to the program’s key stakeholders for their approval before adoption. Communicate revised criteria to project managers for use in future performance reports.
Recommend and monitor remedial action, when required, in line with the program and project governance framework.
Gain approval and sign-off on the deliverables produced in each iteration, release or project phase from designated managers and users in the affected business and IT functions.
Base the approval process on clearly defined acceptance criteria agreed on by key stakeholders prior to work commencing on the project phase or iteration deliverable.
Assess the project at agreed-on major stage-gates, releases or iterations and make formal go/no-go decisions based on predetermined critical success criteria.
Establish and operate a change control system for the project so that all changes to the project baseline (e.g., cost, schedule, scope, quality) are appropriately reviewed, approved and incorporated into the integrated project plan in line with the program and project governance framework
Manage Project Resources and Work Packages
Identify business and IT resource needs for the project and clearly map appropriate roles and responsibilities, with escalation and decision-making authorities agreed on and understood.
Identify required skills and time requirements for all individuals involved in the project phases in relation to defined roles. Staff the roles based on available skills information (e.g., IT skills matrix).
Utilize experienced project management and team leader resources with skills appropriate to the size, complexity, and risk of the project.
Consider and clearly define the roles and responsibilities of other involved parties, including finance, legal, procurement, HR, internal audit, and compliance.
Clearly define and agree on the responsibility for procurement and management of third-party products and services, and manage the relationships.
Identify and authorize the execution of the work according to the project plan.
Identify project plan gaps and provide feedback to the project manager to remediate.
Close a Project or Iteration
Define and apply key steps for project closure, including post-implementation reviews that assess whether a project attained desired results and benefits.
Plan and execute post-implementation reviews to determine whether projects delivered expected benefits and to improve the project management and system development process methodology.
Identify, assign, communicate, and track any uncompleted activities required to achieve planned program project results and benefits.
Regularly, and upon completion of the project, collect from the project participants the lessons learned. Review them and key activities that led to delivered benefits and value. Analyze the data and make recommendations for improving the current project as well as a project management method for future projects.
Obtain stakeholder acceptance of project deliverables and transfer ownership.
Close a Program
Bring the program to an orderly closure, including formal approval, disbanding of the program organization and supporting function, validation of deliverables, and communication of retirement.
Review and document lessons learned. Once the program is retired, remove it from the active investment portfolio.
Put accountability and processes in place to ensure that the enterprise continues to optimize value from the service, asset, or resources. Additional investments may be required at some future time to ensure that this occurs.