Case Study:

IT Governance – IT Project Review

Background

With an increasing diversity of projects in a growing IT organization comprised of various groups, the management team was concerned with staying “on top” of key projects with broad business impact, large budgetary commitments, and dependencies on other projects or business events. A key driver was to ensure this was collaborative rather than oppressive.

What We Did

A weekly meeting (called “Project Review”) was created where project managers would present status to the CIO and his management team. The meeting was chaired by the PMO, who also supplied some simple project metrics. Project managers would supply a two-page document summarizing what we called the “6 Ds”: Dates, Doers, Dollars, Deliverables, Dangers, Dependencies.

Project Review was created to ensure the success of a project. Committee members were supportive, and presenters were open about issues and risks.

What We Achieved

98% of projects were on-time and on-budget. Issues were surfaced quickly and mitigated through the inclusion of IT department heads on the Committee. Project Managers learned to structure their projects and project reporting around the needs of the Project Review Committee. Project discipline was achieved without the traditional PMO bureaucratic overhead.

Summary

Industry: Financial Services
Scope: Corporate-wide exposure, with $160M annual IT spend
Impact: 98% on-time, on-budget project delivery. Project methodology was enforced without bureaucratic overhead. IT management team was fully engaged in most projects.
Duration: 1 month to analyze, 1 month to implement

Harvard Partners Skillsets

  • Business process engineering
  • Facilitiation
  • Project management

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