ARCHIVED - Management of Large Public IT Projects - Canada

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1.6 Management Models

As is evident from the preceding sections, the central agency (Treasury Board) is responsible for setting overall departmental budgets, approving individual IM/IT projects where they are of sufficient size, and monitoring expenditures and project performance on an overall basis. Otherwise, individual departments are completely responsible for managing their own IM/IT projects. The only exception is in the case of government shared systems, where the departments have established cluster groups to carry out joint management of common system maintenance and enhancement projects.

The Enhanced Management Framework describes a governance structure that is to be used government-wide and by departments to select and manage IM/IT projects. This governance structure satisfies the key factors for project success as identified by the Standish Group research: early agreement on project requirements; commitment and involvement of the user community; and commitment, attention and decision-making by top executives. A sound governance structure is expected to help government avoid typical project failures.

The EMF governance structure consists of four elements: planning and governance at the portfolio level; a business case; a project charter; and a review schedule tied to gates for each project.

Planning and Governance at the Portfolio Level identifies the organization' s process for selecting, prioritizing, and monitoring each project in the context of the organization's overall objectives and business priorities.

The Business Case puts the investment decision in a strategic context and identifies the business objectives and options that will affect both the decision and the investment itself. It provides the information necessary to decide whether a project should proceed. It provides an analysis of all the costs, benefits and risks associated with a proposed investment and with the reasonable alternatives to the proposed investment.

The Project Charter is a signed agreement between all stakeholders that defines the objectives, roles, responsibilities and level of participation of each stakeholder.

The Review Schedule tied to Gates establishes in the project charter the project review gates. The review gates are the major decision points of a project – to continue or to walk away. For each gate, the deliverables for that review, the type of review, the stakeholders responsible for reviewing each deliverable and the appropriate approval authorities must be defined.

Stakeholders in the governance structure are:

• Business Program executives and Information Technology executives responsible for strategies, priorities, and decisions;
• Business Program managers who implement information technology solutions in their program delivery value chains;
• Information Technology process support teams who provide the common standards and infrastructure for projects; and
• Information Technology project teams who need an action-ready project infrastructure so that they can concentrate on delivery of the business solution.

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