How ITS Defines a Project

What is a Project Management Practice

The Project Management Practice at WCM ITS is the primary group that defines and maintains standards for project management practices so that we can achieve benefits from standardizing and following project management policies, processes, and methods.

The Project Management Practice aims to:

  • Create a model to help determine the optimal mix and sequencing of proposed projects to best achieve the organization’s overall IT goals. 

  • Provide a clear picture of our resource supply, including resource roles and skills to help balance our capacity to execute against incoming demand. 

  • Allow stakeholders 100% visibility into their project initiatives.  

  • Build a project management repository to document best practices, lessons learned, and examples of various documents that may be developed during a project. 

  • Establish a training program not only to raise the skill level of project managers, but also to raise project management awareness within the WCM community. 

  • Constantly evaluate and improve the Project Management Practice processes in terms of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. 

What is a Project?

A project is a unique process consisting of a set of coordinated and controlled activities with start and finish dates, undertaken to achieve an objective conforming to specific requirements, including constraints of time, cost, and resources. 

Some examples of work that are projects: 

  • Implement a new system or service 

  • Make significant improvements to a system or service 

  • Build or significantly enhance infrastructure 

  • Apply major patches and upgrades to software 

Some examples of work that are not projects: 

  • Daily Production Support Activities 

  • System administration/changes 

  • Break/fix activities 

  • Support Desk activities 

It is possible that the outcome of a break/fix activity results in a need for a new project, for example, to create a solution so that the problem does not occur again. Please refer to the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) Process Guide for further information about operational work following the ITIL model. 

What is Project Management?

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. In the context of WCM ITS, it means applying the Project Management Methodology and practices to a project of work to increase the chance of project success. 

Tech Tuesday: Project Management for Academia

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