- Foreword and Introduction
- 1: Putting projects in context
- 2: Entity arrangements
- 2.1 Strategic alignment
- 2.2 People and culture
- 2.3 Effective governance
- 2.4 Common APS Requirements
- Summary for entity arrangements
- 3: Individual project proposals
- 3.1 Clarifying the concept
- 3.2 The business case
- 3.3 Approving the project
- Summary for individual projects
- 4: Project implementation
- Appendices
- Quick reference card
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Understanding of approval processes and concepts
Better Practice results: Project proposals are more effectively assessed and compared because they are described on a consistent basis.
The approval of projects will be improved if there is a wide understanding of entity planning processes among the staff who generate new project proposals. This understanding helps ensure proposals are available at the right time and in the right format for a coordinated assessment by decision-makers.
Start small
“We rolled out an ambitious project management program. In hindsight it was too much, too quickly. I now recommend a more graduated approach. The first point of leverage is to get shared understanding of the ‘what and why’ of projects: the definition of deliverables and benefits.”
… Agency planning coordinator.
The proposals themselves will be more effective if staff have a shared understanding of specific project planning concepts. There are a common set of concepts used to effectively and incisively describe projects – such as scope, deliverables, functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and business outcomes.9 Gaining this shared understanding across the staff involved in projects will benefit not only the assessment and approval of projects, but also their subsequent development, implementation and operation.
Common language pays off:
“Getting a shared understanding of basic project concepts, such as deliverables and requirements, sounds easy and unimportant. In fact, getting all players using them consistently was hard, but worth it. It took two years. We provided local agency examples, and had a centrally-funded business analyst to help sponsors.
For example, previously a proposal might describe its major benefit as a ‘modern, scalable payments system with real-time data transfer’. It sounds superficially plausible but it is really just a stew of words that did not help the investment committee make decisions. Now we talk the same language. For example: a ‘payments system’ is a deliverable; and ‘ability to increase from 5 to 30 million payments’ is a non-functional requirement that explains what was really meant by ‘scalable’. This shared understanding of concepts helps people across the agency describe what they want more quickly and reliably, and then get what they want.”
… Agency Chief Information Officer.
9: See Appendix Project planning and approval terms at page 100 for definitions of concepts associated with defining a project.
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