INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

What is Project Governance

What is a project?

A Project is a great opportunity for organizations and individuals to achieve their business and non-business objectives more efficiently through implementing change.  Projects help us make desired changes in an organized manner and with reduced probability of failure.

Projects differ from other types of work (e.g. process, task, procedure).  Meanwhile, in the broadest sense a project is defined as a specific, finite activity that produces an observable and measurable result under certain preset requirements.

A Project is a temporary, unique and progressive attempt or endeavor made to produce some kind of a tangible or intangible result (a unique product, service, benefit, competitive advantage, etc.). It usually includes a series of interrelated tasks that are planned for execution over a fixed period of time and within certain requirements and limitations such as cost, quality, performance, others.

What is Project Governance?

At its core, project governance is about putting a structure and process in place to ensure that IT is working on projects that most closely align to the university’s strategic plan and thus deliver the highest value back to the functional units.

The Governance Committees

The University of Toledo has three governance committees:  Academic, Administrative and Clinical.  Each committee is charged with the responsibility of serving as gatekeepers and champions for the strategic initiatives requiring IT effort for their business unit. 

Governance committee membership is representative of the functional business units it serves.  Members are appointed to each committee by senior leadership.  Each committee meets bi-monthly to:

• Review and discuss project status
• Discuss and evaluate new project requests’ relative value and merit
• Prioritize new (and not started) project requests

Governance committees have the formal authority to prioritize the strategic projects that require IT work resources with the goal of optimal utilization of shared IT resources and maximizing ROI of the project portfolio.

The IT Governance & Prioritization process ensures that the university understands the technology efforts that have been requested and that funding and technology personnel are assigned to those projects with the highest university priority in order to complete the projects on time, on budget and within scope.

Governance Committee Members

Project Intake, Scoring and Prioritazation

Upon receipt of the project request, the request is reviewed and classified as either Strategic, Operational or Regulatory. Strategic projects are immediately routed to the Business Unit’s Executive Sponsor.  Operational and Regulatory projects are routed to the requestor’s manager and named project sponsor (who is a member of the business unit governance committee) for approval.

Once approved by the business unit’s executive sponsor, strategic projects are prepared for governance committee review. To that end, the PMO and IT Business Analysts perform high level analysis of costs, benefits and resource requirements.

Governance Committee members will then meet to discuss and score the strategic value of the project request and ultimately prioritize the project relative to the full portfolio.

After each governance meeting, a communication is made to project requestors presenting the prioritized portfolio.