Introducing Project Management for IT Teams PROJECT MANAGEMENT CKG

What this presentation is NOT about  This is NOT about project management theory.  This is NOT about project management implementation.  This is NOT a recommendation for project management best practices.

What this presentation IS about  A story about how project management was introduced to a non-project management based IT team.  Frameworks, standards, guiding principles.  Hybrid methodologies used to help the team acclimate to formal project management.  Challenges and Benefits derived from the journey.

Context: Teams and Projects  Desktop Support Consolidation – a practice in change management and team formation.  10 IT Staff, non-developer, diverse range experience, skills, age and backgrounds  Non-project management oriented, small scale projects, no complex, no timelines for delivery.

Why project management in IT?  Ensures we completely understand the user requirements.  Complexity can translate to risk, it is a way to mitigate risk.  Provides a roadmap for the project team to gauge and maintain progress.  Provides a transparent measure of accountability to project stakeholders.

Frameworks and Standards  PMI for project management  ITIL for service management  Many modern frameworks and standards try to apply a “non-prescriptive” approach. They don’t tell you WHAT to do, they instead describe a scalable process to use.  We leverage this to make a model that works for our projects, teams and organizations as they evolve.

Project Management Methodology  Waterfall vs Agile  Hybrid approach : Waterfall with a few Agile iterations Project Charter Requirements Document Functional Design Quality Testing Deployment Monitoring

Project Team Meetings  Project Plans, Due dates, Charts, Reports…  Tasks, Assignments, Overall progress indicators…  Intoducting Project Management vocabulary to IT Teams  What type of project artifacts are most useful?  Microsoft Project Plan  Atlassian Confluence Space

Challenges  Balancing process vs outcome  IT folks want to build things right out of the gate, we are natural tinkerers  Formal project management teams have staff assigned to single domain subject matter expertise. We find it to be more multi domain (IT & Business Analyst & Training).  Staff not accustomed to highly due date driven work can become demoralized with tools that measure slip