1. Project Management for Student Affairs: Ending the Never-ending Project
David Sweeney, Director
Brooke Woodruff, IT Manager
Texas A&M University
Division of Student Affairs
February 21, 2008
Copyright David Sweeney and Brooke Woodruff, This work is the intellectual property of the authors. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the authors.

2. Who’s In The Room? Centralized University IT
Decentralized Division/Department IT
Project Managers
Developers
Administration
Faculty

3. Today’s Agenda History: Name That Year Our History at Texas A&M
Operating Structures
Student Affairs
Higher Education
Project Management
Defining a Project – Ideas vs. Deliverables
Visual Case Study: Critical Incident Response System
Ensuring a Projects Successful Completion
Visual Case Study: Enterprise Event Management System
A Model Moving Forward

4. History: Name That Year
Name the year that this abstract segment was written:
“Management is a future-oriented decision process that relates resources into a total functional system for the accomplishment of a set of objectives. As a rule, universities do not have a management system, and there is no understanding of their environments in terms of inputs, outputs, objectives, and organizational relationships of a line and staff necessary for such a system. Hence, many of the problems of project management in the university arise from lack of integrated planning, programming, and budgeting, and from an operational structure which does not encourage effective collection, distribution, and control over resources.“ (Unknown)

5. A Brief History of the Department of IT, Division of Student Affairs at Texas A&M

6. The Operating Structures: Philosophies
Higher Education Philosophy (Birnbaum, 1988)
Poorly run but highly effective
Agreement is more important than efficacy
Institutional Culture has teeth
Tolerance for poor results and ambiguity
Student Affairs Philosophy
Student Development takes precedence over efficiency
Suspicious of a “Corporate” Model Approach
Student growth can’t be measured
Staff accountability is measured by ideas, not deliverables.
Project Management Philosophy (PMI, 2004)
Adheres to the definition of a project
Establishment of clear, achievable and measurable objectives
Balances the competing demands for quality, scope, time and cost
Adapts the specifications, plans and approach to the different concerns and expectations of the various stakeholders.

7. Defining a Project – Ideas vs. Deliverables
Student Affairs is an idea and innovation warehouse centered around a committee based decision making model.
Plans are often loosely formulated from an concept or general need.
IT is then charged with the task of implementation.
The “concept” is never matured into a project.
Sponsors, stakeholders, requirements, timelines and deliverables i.e.; the project plans are not clearly defined.
Case Study: Incident Reporting and Tracking System (IRTS)
Definition of a project: “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.”(PMI, 2004)

8. Visual Case Study: Incident Reporting and Tracking System
Feature 1
Stakeholder
unknown
Feature 2
Stakeholder
unknown
Project Core Does not exist. Loosely cobbled together features make up the application.
Feature 3
Stakeholder
unknown
Feature 4
Stakeholder
unknown
Feature 5
Stakeholder
unknown
Feature 6
Stakeholder
unknown
Historically no project management
No project team (students used to develop)
No requirements (scope creep)
No plan for scalability
No historical documentation
NO PLAN or SCHEDULE.
No assessment for need
No Risk Assessment
Ongoing and EXPENSIVE
Technical inaccessibility (maintenance requirement is HIGH)
Etc., etc., etc.
Feature 7
Stakeholder
unknown
Feature 8
Stakeholder
unknown
With zero project management, no project plan and no specs – IRTS continues to exist as a never-ending project.

9. Ensuring a projects successful completion
Some of the most critical IT project footings in Higher Ed include
People, Committees, Stakeholders
Sponsors, excellent history tracking (knowledge management)
original contracts (SLAs)
a secure funding source.
Accountability for deliverables for all stakeholders
Keeping all stakeholders involved
Securing quality people to get the job done (Full-time employees and well mentored Student Workers
A projects potential for ending (and being successful) is directly tied to it’s original footings.

10. Visual Case Study: Events Management System (EMS)
Feature 1
Known
Stakeholder
Feature 2
Known
Stakeholder
Project core
developed from
clearly defined
requirements.
Features are
independent of the
core functionality.
Feature 3
Known
Stakeholder
Feature 4
Known
Stakeholder
Historically no project management
No project team (students used to develop)
No requirements (scope creep)
No plan for scalability
No historical documentation
NO PLAN or SCHEDULE.
No assessment for need
No Risk Assessment
Ongoing and EXPENSIVE
Technical inaccessibility (maintenance requirement is HIGH)
Etc., etc., etc.
Feature 5
Known
Stakeholder
Feature 6
Known
Stakeholder
The idea for an Event Management System originated out of committee work. The committee assigned a sole sponsor.

11. A Model Moving Forward
Committees are here to stay – leverage committee work through aiding the leadership to establish clear goals, deliverables and sponsorship.
Understand that consensus is important and use it to your advantage
Establish funding sources before proceeding
Efficiency is NOT always the first concern (for SA)
Work closely with departments to set up mentorship programs with student workers and individuals tasked with IT goals.

12. Bibliography David Sweeney sweeney@tamu.edu
Unknown (1968). Program/Project Management of Sponsored Programs in a University Environment. Originally presented as part of the Management Training Program for Educational Research Leaders, Columbus, Ohio, September 18, 1968 Birnbaum, R. (1988). How Colleges Work. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco PMI (2004). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge Third Edition, Newtown Square, Project Management Institute, Inc.
David Sweeney
Brooke Woodruff