SummaryProject or enhancement proposals are evaluated and ranked by the OIT Project Review Team. This group meets every two weeks to discuss projects and prioritization for the next 3-9 months. For projects exceeding 200 hours of staff time or $12,000 a project ranking process as described below will be initiated. Otherwise, this project prioritization process is not necessary. (Although it may be useful to the project team as an exercise to help clarify the impact and resource requirements for the project.) Additional information will need to be collected that will help with the project ranking criteria as defined below. Significant, high value projects of enterprise scope are also submitted to the IT Oversight Committee for review and prioritization. How is a project prioritized?Projects considered for the ranking process can come from: - Project or Enhancement proposals
- Projects in progress
- Pending project
For projects exceeding 200 hours of staff time or $12,000 a project ranking process will include the following criteria: - Strategic Value - The project helps advance the goals of the University or the functional unit requesting the project.
- User Priority and Commitment - The project is important to a department and results in significant time savings for the users. If a department submits more than one project, they should also provide a ranking of their projects.
- Criticality and Risk Mitigation - The overall criticality or reduction of risk to campus mission and goals of the activity the IT feature or system supports (i.e., undergraduate or graduate education, research, business process automation and improvement, timeliness or streamlining). Legal requirements or mandates indicate criticality as do potential liabilities due to not being in compliance or a legal action being brought against us if the system is not implemented or maintained.
- Risk Mitigation - The overall reduction of risk exposure. When determining risk avoidance, the probability of threats, the vulnerability of the system to those threats, and the impact if the threat occurs, should all be considered.
- Impact and Visibility - The project is visible or widespread to the campus, benefiting a significant portion of the campus population or the project fulfills executive management needs.
- Savings and Efficiency - Measure of the cost savings or revenue collection opportunities resulting from the project. The cost of doing a function without an IT solution or without an update to an existing solution, in terms of dollars or staff work hours.
- Readiness to Move Forward - Indication of active project leadership, existing in-house technical expertise, momentum, support, community buy-in, project plan completeness, potential for success, etc.
A ranking number is assigned to each category using a scale of 1 to 5. A definition of each level is available at Project Ranking Criteria. Each category is given a weight or percentage representing the importance of that category to the evaluation process. The Project Ranking Tool has been developed to facilitate deriving these rankings. All requests are evaluated using the same evaluation rating process. A sample of the ranking structure used for project "MyProject" might be: Strategic Value | Weight = .20
Rank (1-5) = 4
Total = 0.80 | | User Priority and Commitment | Weight = .05
Rank (1-5) = 4
Total = 0.20 | Criticality and Risk Mitigation | Weight = .20
Rank (1-5) = 5
Total = 1.00 | | Risk Mitigation | Weight = .10
Rank (1-5) = 3
Total = 0.30 | | Impact and Visibility | Weight = .20
Rank (1-5) = 4
Total = 0.80 | Savings and Efficiency | Weight = .25 15
Rank (1-5) = 3
Total = 0.7545 | Readiness to Move Forward | Weight = .10
Rank (1-5) = 3
Total = 0.30 | Total | - Ranking Total = 3.85
- Project rankings are compared against other projects in order to determine the relative importance of the project.
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Assignment of ResourcesProjects are assigned to OIT staff as resources become available, starting with the highest priority project, but the following are also considered: - OIT considers existing projects, work effort needed for the project, dependencies, and developer skill and availability when assigning resources.
- It is possible for a project further down on the priority list to start before one higher up, if required resources for the higher project are not yet available.
- A campus department may provide funding for a project so that OIT can hire additional programming staff to work on the project.
- OIT Review Committee works to commit resources for larger projects well in advance of project start dates as these resources are harder to schedule.
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