Before you start...

Here are some key questions to ask before starting a project initiation request

  • What are the business drivers for this project?

  • What are the project objectives and goals?

  • Do you and your team have time and resources to be actively engaged throughout the project? 

  • Is there funding for this project?


Project Partnership

  • All projects with IT components are run under a partnership model called “Two-In-The-Box”. This model establishes and assigns two core roles (Business Lead and IT Technical Lead) to projects. This ensures there is one single point of coordination for all business and IT activities. 

  • For more details on these roles and other project roles and responsibilities please see: Roles and Responsibilities


IT Project Governance Process

1- Project Request

All project requests with IT components start with completing the IT Project Initiation Request form. Following your submission a project initiation meeting will be scheduled by the IT PPMO to evaluate and determine the size and complexity of the project. 


2- Project Initiation

The goal of this phase of work is to fully understand the scope of work, timeline needs, impact, overall effort and costs needed to accomplish the request. Depending on the understanding of the business requirements and technical understanding this work can complete anywhere from a day up to a few months.


3- Review and Acceptance

Following the conclusion of the Project Initiation phase the request will go through a review process for acceptance determination. The size of the request will determine the path of which the it will be reviewed (including the possibility of needing to present to our IT Project Governance Committee)

IT Project Governance Committee

The IT Project Governance Committee has broad representation of university constituents fostering dialogue and collaborative decision-making to identify and accept projects that best serve the needs of the university. They consider many factors when determining the acceptance of a project request. Some of these factors include alignment to university goals, benefits, costs, and effort. Additionally, the committee leverages tools such as the Project Decision Making Matrix to help make decisions around which project requests to choose and their suggested priority. 

Process & Schedule

Before a request can go to the IT project governance committee the Project Initiation phase must be completed and accepted by the PMO at least one week prior to the next monthly Project Governance committee meeting. The committee meets on the first Monday of every month unless there is a holiday. 


4- Onboarding and Scheduling 

Once a project has been fully accepted the final work involved is scheduling the project into the IT Project Portfolio. This final work involves the review of current IT activities/projects, resource availability with consideration of the requested timeline.