1. Major Project Governance Assessment Toolkit Mark Ritchie, University of Edinburgh Pauline Woods-Wilson, Lancaster University Project and Change Management Group

2. Established March 2013 Committee from across UK HE Committee members new to UCISA Focus on providing practical resources for practitioners Collaborative and action oriented group – more than just the sum of the parts! “Working together to promote and develop project and change management best practice in HE and FE”

3. UCISA Project and Change Management Group ~280 subscribers on mailing list ~100 followers on Twitter 2 resources published Major Projects Governance Assessment Toolkit (July 2014) Effective Risk Management (December 2014) First event PCMG15 (June 2015) “Working together to promote and develop project and change management best practice in HE and FE”

4. Major Project Governance Assessment Toolkit

5. Why is it needed? Project governance often ineffective Unclear roles and responsibilities Lack of confidence in project status Focus on IT rather than business requirements and benefits Weak change management Unclear where action required Unforeseen risks and issues Poor project outcomes

6. How was it developed? Peer review by Project and Change Management Group (2013) Role definitions and “business as usual” added by Lancaster University (2014) UCISA Best Practice Toolkit Published (2014) Student Record Implementation Lessons Learned (2009) Shared Academic Timetabling (2010-13) Adopted for all major IT projects (2012) Research Management (2013-14) University Web Site CMS (2014) Library Management (2014-15)

7. What’s in the toolkit? Governance assessment process Scorecard for identifying major projects Project governance elements Role descriptions Visualisation tool Case studies

8. Major Projects “A major project is a project that has a significant financial, operational, or reputational impact on a university or college” COST Consider whole life costs over 48 months IMPACT Consider extent and nature of impact on students and staff COMPLEXITY Consider number of external stakeholders and changes to business processes and IT systems REPUTATION Consider potential for reputational damage if project goes wrong The toolkit can be used as a checklist for any project and modified to meet your institutional requirements

9. Project Governance Elements Vision for Change Business Case and Alignment Team Building Communication Implementation Risk Management Project Management Governance Structures Measurement Benefits Realisation Business As Usual Learning Sponsorship & Stakeholder Buy in Create vision Engage people Deliver Embed

10. Project Roles Project Executive (Sponsor) Project Manager Senior User Senior Supplier Project Board User Group

11. Project Roles Project Sponsor Owns the business case and is ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the project Senior User Ensures that the services delivered by the project meet the needs of user stakeholders

12. Project Roles Senior Supplier Represents the team delivering the project and is accountable for the quality, performance, technical integrity and timeliness of the supplier deliverables Project Board Provides overall governance for the project. The key members of the Project Board are the Project Executive, the Senior User and the Senior Supplier

13. Project Roles User Group Represents the diverse range of user stakeholders for the project. The primary responsibility of the User Group is to ensure that the project deliverables meet the needs of users. The Senior User typically chairs the User Group and represents user interests on the Project Board Project Manager Has day to day responsibility for running the project and is accountable to the Project Board. The Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that project produces the required deliverables within the tolerances agreed with the Project Board

14. Project Roles Project Assurance An audit function used to ensue that the project is being run correctly and that complete and accurate information reaches the Project Board.

15. Governance Assessment PROJECT TEAM PROJECT BOARD USER GROUP SCORES (For Each Governance Element) 0 = Not Started 1–3 = Emerging, immature and/or incomplete 4–6 = Progressing towards best practice 7–10 = Mature and working effectively REASONS FOR SCORING SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

16. Visualisation – Single Assessment

17. Visualisation – Assessment Over Time ___ July 2013 ___ Feb 2014

18. Act Following Assessment Focus on the governance elements most needing attention Publicise outcomes and increase project engagement Recognise and reinforce existing good practice Follow up suggestions for improvement IMPROVE PROJECT OUTCOMES

19. Feedback So Far We have had some success with the Major Projects Assessment Toolkit. The gap for us was sizing across the project piece. We have addressed this by amending the toolkit so that we can understand the requirements for different sizes of project. This looks really interesting, I have asked our internal auditors to do a review of projects and programmes to pick up on exactly some of these issues! We hope that the governance assessment and visualisation tool will help people understand where we are and aren’t making progress with our projects’ health. It seemed very clear to us, and we are always looking at ways to present concepts visually.

20. Any Questions? UCISA Project and Change Management Group https://twitter.com/UCISA_PCMG https://www.linkedin.com/groups/UCISAPCMG -7427251/about Join our mailing list to have your say and find out more! Major Project Governance Assessment Toolkit