Getting Started

This Project Management Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) is intended to provide general guidance and standardization to the coordination and execution of CSU IT projects.

Applicable to:

CSU DoIT staff managing projects

Definitions:

Key takeaway: maintaining appropriate project definitions and meta data allows team members, leadership, and campus to understand project priorities, progress, and risks, while providing a simplified structure to find and report to appropriate stakeholder groups.

• Project Structure: the basic configuration of DoIT’s Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) environment
  • Project Request: a form used to collect project requests to assist in the IT Governance and project approval processes (NOTE: a project request is not yet a project, subject to appropriate review and approval)
  • Project: an approved and temporary endeavor with defined goals, timelines, and deliverables, estimated at over 30 hours of combined work (under 30 hours/approx. 1 month timeline is considered ITSM work in Freshservice as tickets, ticket tasks, or Freshservice projects for coordination of dependent activities); acknowledging this may be difficult to determine accurately, the teams involved will estimate knowing there is often much uncertainty at this stage
    • Smartsheet: CSU’s tool to manage and track project activities, as well as provide governance workflow and reporting
  • Program: a group of related projects that are managed together to produce a common benefit, such as Cybersecurity Alignment (CSA)
  • Portfolio: a collection of projects and programs that are managed together to achieve strategic goals, currently aligned with the four IT Governance Demand Management Groups (DMG)
  • Service: a predefined or ongoing set of activities to support, maintain, operate, or improve a system or application that does not have defined end dates (and under 30 hours)
    • Freshservice: CSU’s tool to manage and track IT Service Management (ITSM) activities, including services, incidents, KBs, and changes
• Key Project Metrics/Meta Data: various key data elements are used to track progress on projects:
  • Name: a shortened title of the project used for quick reference
  • Description: a brief text description of the project goals and scope, generally described or defined during the project approval process
  • Type: assists in determining the type of review required for approval and reporting:
    • Operational (improve or optimize existing processes, systems, or operations – approved by IT leadership)
    • Strategic (create new systems or processes with broader impact or longer-term organizational direction – approved by IT Governance)
    • Exploratory (efforts that are less defined or working groups formed to support unknown bodies of work that need to be led or coordinated in a controlled fashion as a project)
    • RPF (indicating the product or solution is being identified via a procurement process and will be reviewed by governance once a product is selected)
  • Status: tracking metric used in reporting and communicating progress:
    • Roadmap (approved and planned for a future date)
    • Not Started (approved but not yet kicked off)
    • In Progress (work is actively taking place)
    • On-Hold (temporary pause due to resource scope, or business constraint)
    • Completed (all deliverables met)
    • Cancelled (project has been terminated before completion)
  • Phase: in general order, projects are managed in phases to provide guidance on process and deliverables, as well as reporting and communicating progress:
    • 0-Pre-Kick Off (as projects are approved and resourced, activities may be delayed)
    • 1-Initiating (define project, identify team and stakeholders, develop Charter and scope, gain Sponsor approval to proceed)
    • 2-Planning (define deliverables, schedule, plans, tasks, and budgets, identify risks, and create communication or organizational change management plans)
    • 3-Executing (perform project work as identified, manage meetings, notes, and task tracking, and produce project deliverables)
    • 4-Monitoring & Controlling (often occurs alongside Executing, however, it is more focused on managing risks, changes, communications, testing, and rework)
    • 5-Go Live & Closing (finalizing deliverables, obtaining Sponsor approval on project goals, transition to operations/support teams, and conducting lesson learned to close the project – releasing resources)
  • % Complete: this metric tracks tasks and progress, providing an estimate of % complete (can be tracked and automated, or summarized and manually entered – NOTE: this metric can move up or down depending on how tasks are being identified and completed)
  • Health: used to track and report progress and issues:
    • None (not set or identified yet)
    • Green (within budget, scope, resource, and timeline)
    • Yellow (not falling within 1 metric and requires attention to resolve)
    • Red (not falling within 2 or more metrics and requires immediate attention to resolve)
  • Trend: provides a visual representation of how the health of the project is changing over time:
    • Neutral (the default setting indicates the project is in a steady state – largely considered ‘going well’)
    • Up (recent changes have positively impacted project progress and likelihood of success)
    • Down (recent changes have negatively impacted project progress)
  • Start and End Date: agreed or approved dates of where project work begins, as well as estimated dates of project completion (Sponsor approval should be obtained when moving out dates)
  • DMG Alignment (Portfolio): one of the four IT Governance Demand Management Group that the initiative falls under; used for project request review as well as project portfolio visibility (Administrative Systems, Infrastructure/Architect/Security, Research Technology, Student Success/Instructional Tech)
  • Program Alignment: collections of grouping of similar projects to be managed in a coordinated effort that align to the Top DoIT strategic initiatives
  • Campus Alignment: used to track the primary campus impacted by the project: Fort Collins, Pueblo, Spur, System
  • Project Size Estimate: used to guide the approval, assignment, and management in the following categories: Small (1-2 months), Medium (3-6 months), Large (7-11 months), X-Large (12+ months)

General Smartsheet Management Instructions

Key takeaway: projects estimated over 30 hours will be managed in Smartsheet (either through detailed and connected plans, or through other manners currently used at a team level and manually updated in Smartsheet) and stand-ups will be used to maintain project data and progress at a higher level.

Post-project approval requests will be converted to projects and assigned/tracked in the CSU Active IT Project Smartsheet (for access or additional information, please discuss with your supervisor or a member of the PMO) for those initiatives over 30 hours of estimated work.  Depending on the size or complexity of the project, plans can be created in separate Smartsheet and dynamically linked to the CSU Active IT Project sheet to provide more automated task percentage updates, or for less complex/smaller projects, percentages can be managed manually without a linked plan.

Regular project stand-ups will be held to allow those assigned as the project manager or coordinator (by title or responsibility in the project) to briefly bring forward any pertinent updates and make any project meta data adjustments in real time (if required).  Detailed project team meetings will be held outside of the stand-up with the primary goal of the stand-up being to maintain confidence in the project data and provide broad project updates to team members not directly involved in the individual projects.  

While managing the overall project intake, governance, and management process is important, the highest priority projects will be the focus of all team members as defined by IT Governance and the IT Senior Leadership Team.

General Guidance for Resources Listed as Project Manager/Coordinators 

Key takeaway: project progress is tracked using Project Management guidelines as described in the DEFINITIONS section of this KB and templates are provided to assist project team in coordinating their efforts. 

Larger projects are generally assigned a member of the Project Services team or a Project Manager, as resources allow.  The team will follow the outlined Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) guidelines for those projects.  For team-level/self-managed projects (where the team has selected a member to coordinate the project), the Project Services team can consult on process, structure, documentation, and best practices – open communication, collaboration, and partnership is key!

Project documentation templates, both inside Smartsheet (plans, registers, trackers) and in separate document types (Charters, Lessons Learned), such as Word or Excel, are available for use by project teams.  These are all tools to provide as much clarity, tracking, and collaboration as needed to successfully deliver the project.

Document templates will be stored in SharePoint as ready-only documents and can be downloaded, edited, modified, and shared as the project team sees fit, located on the DoIT SharePoint site.

Outcome

By following the guidance above, CSU DoIT teams will contribute to the continuous improvement of project management processes and outcomes.