Over the last few months, all areas of the Service have been working with the Project Office to embed demand management. This is looking at the resource required to deliver business as usual, known projects, and predicting the resource required for future projects.
We are now in a position where we have a much clearer picture of the demand coming in, and our capacity. All projects go through the ‘Gate’ process where they are documented to get a clear and shared understanding of what they are, what they will achieve, by when, how much they will cost and what resources they need. This information is then fed into the Governance process.
A number of Application Programme Boards have been set up to review all projects, proposed projects (ideas and business cases), enhancements and strategic initiatives within their portfolio of applications. These are in the areas of Student Admin Systems, Teaching and Learning, Research Applications, Library Systems, and Web and Mobile Applications currently.
The Governance process means that many projects are initially reviewed, clarified and challenged by the Business at the Application Programme Boards. They are also discussed at the Project Advisory Committee with representatives from across the service, where often different perspectives are raised and considered. The Gate documents are then considered on a 3 weekly basis by the IT Leadership Team. ITLT can approve projects of under £50,000 or refer projects over £50,000, to the Business Systems Committee (BSC) for consideration. BSC is chaired by Lee Sanders and has representatives from all areas of the University.
Reviewing projects also allows us to look at their purpose, interdependencies with other projects, and whether we have the resources available at the right time or whether we need to look for other options. For projects coming in from outside the service, this process ensures that they are being feed through the architecture and security processes, and are encouraged to complete comprehensive requirement documents.
Through this work, we are getting a better understand of the availability of teams. In some cases projects are being delayed until resources become available, and due diligence is being taken with further work being required on some projects prior to approval. The data is being shared with BSC to provide more visibility of our demand and resourcing pinch points. The data has already highlighted the requirement for an external BA to be employed who could focus on specific projects, and it has supported the requirement for additional Service Now resource days during the HR Service Now implementation.
All projects are recorded on the Clarity and the Gate documents and Project Updates are on the IT Projects and Demand SharePoint Site, which everyone in the service should be able to access. The latest BSC Project tracker that gives a short overview of all BSC projects is available on this site.
Demand management is a complex topic and teams across the service are continuing to work together to review, embed and simplify processes for Project and Resource Managers therefore enhancing the visibility and transparency of the projects, initiative and demand in IT Services.