VITA Response to Comment ID: 226068

Commenter: Sharon Michaux, Virginia Department of Health

Thank you for taking the time to provide detailed comments to the Project Management (PM) Standard. Your comments are in bold below and responses follow in regular text.

Project Management Standard Comments

Page 7, Section 3.2 Adaptive Governance and Oversight Model

Agencies will be assessed periodically on five areas.  Define the criteria for a favorable assessment of past projects.  This seems too subjective.  Also, for previous change request activity, what would be deemed unfavorable?

Favorable assessment of project performance is based on PMD’s overall assessment at status reporting.

The criteria are: 

• Status reporting Determination. The different statuses of Red, yellow, green are based on an equation that takes the number of status reports and divides it by the number of months. For example: (Red, Yellow) /Project Months. Determinations that result in a status of less than 25% move an agency to Group 2
• The assessment timeframe for reviewing which group an agency is in is every 24 months (active and completed projects)

Criteria for change request activity are:

• The agency has fewer than 25% of projects with 2 or more change requests
• Timeframe for review 24 months (active and completed projects)

Criteria for all five factors will be presented to agencies during information sessions later this summer.

It has also come to the attention of the Agency that any change request on a project would result in the project turning red.

IT should be noted that, to avoid having to submit change requests, project managers will need to budget time, resources, and funding at, or beyond, a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) of + 50% – 75%.  This will provide them with enough time, talent and money to deliver the project without having to create a change order, should they encounter scope creep, loss of skilled resources, poor estimation from team members and vendors, price increases, etc..

A different approach would be to document the changes requested and create a backlog.  They would deliver the requirements of the current project, and then launch a version 2 to account for the items accumulated in the backlog.

Does the project go to red status only if the change order exceeds the contingency, since the contingency is included in the budget, and issuing a change order would still theoretically keep the project on schedule and on budget?

Change requests are a normal control process in Project Management (traditional, agile or hybrid methodology). VITA has a Change Template, the IAOC is charged with reviewing and approving/rejecting changes, and managing change is crucial, constant and consistent with best practices. IT Projects have a required contingency component, and this is due to the fact that projects experience change. Project teams do their best to estimate and create the most logical, rational, probable projections. Everything is forward-looking, so all project plan components are a forecast of what ‘will be’. The logical person understands things change, and project teams know that agility and flexibility are essential during a project.

It is not correct that any change request would result in the project turning red.  The current PM standard does not require or suggest that a project will be considered red if a change request is submitted. While this may have been considered, it was not adopted for the current PM standard.  The PMD recognizes that managed change is a normal and accepted process in project management.

Once a project goes to red status, how does the project return to “green”?

Project status is changed through the managed change control process, as outlined in the Standard, Section 5.4.2.

Page 14, Section 4.3.9 Project Manager

Full time Risk Manager – Will VITA provide this resource?  What if agency does not have that resource or if they have to hire the resource, will VITA allow for an exception until a resource is onboarded?  Does full time mean that the Risk Manager can only work on one project or is the resource allowed to work on multiple projects?

The prior requirement for a full time Risk Manager has been removed. The Standard now requires a Risk Manager only for Category 1 (High-Risk) projects.

Risk management is a subset of project management. How is the project to justify a dedicated risk management resource when this has historically been the PM responsibility? 

A risk manager has always been strongly recommended for Category 1 and 2 projects. This change is due to the ever-increasing complexity of large scale and high-risk projects in the Commonwealth.

Page 16, Section 5.2.1 Project Manager (PM) Qualification and Selection

Approving Project Managers for High Risk IT projects - What if the Agency resource is not approved by VITA or if the Agency does not have an available resource that meets VITA’s standards?  Can the Agency get an exception?

When agencies do not have the skillset needed or required in house, they should consider using the VITA CAI IT contingent labor contract.

Page 17, Section 5.2.7 Procurement Governance Request

This section needs to be removed from the project documentation section.  The PGR would have already been done at this point in the project.  This section already appears in the Standard in section 2.4.1.

The referenced section is part of the PIA process. The procurement vehicle should not be signed until after the PIA approval is received. The purpose of the section is to list items that would be considered/involved in the Initiation process.

Page 9, 2.1 Overview

The PM Standard addresses the governance and oversight of information technology projects and is not synonymous with a specific System Development Lifecycle (SDLC), should end this with a period not a comma.

Page 9 2.2 last sentence  “and then any future enhancement”. Remove “then” not needed, unnecessarily wordy, does not contribute to sentence meaning

Punctuation and sentence structure have been adjusted as needed.

Page 9, 2.3

1st sentence should read:

Project Investment Business Case (IBC) Approval occurs under the auspices of the ITIM process and is outside the scope of the PM Standard.

3d sentence should read:

If a proposed project is part of the Agency Strategic Plan, the Agency will develop the appropriate Investment Business Case Approval documentation and undergo a Select Risk/Complexity Assessment in the Commonwealth Technology Portfolio. Those documents will then be submitted for CIO IBC approval.

2.4, Change the run-on sentence:

IT procurements are governed by policies and procedures established by VITA Supply Chain Management. They conform to Commonwealth and Agency IT strategic plans, as described in Code of Virginia § 2.2-2012.

2.4.1

First sentence should read:

Procurement Governance Request is the CTP form agencies use to document they are ready to procure IT goods or services.

Punctuation and sentence structure have been adjusted as needed.

Page 12, 3.1

5^th paragraph: Agile in this context should always be capitalized:

Although agile has its roots in software and IT, agile adoption is growing and expanding in a wide range of industries and within State government. Blending agile and waterfall methodologies is acceptable because every project is different and a “one size fits all” approach does not exist.

Capitalization and sentence structure have been adjusted as needed.

Page 13

Better structure:

The CIO has discretionary authority to designate agencies to Group 2 or Group 1.

This has been rewritten.

Page 15-16

Punctuation at the end of the bullets is not consistent and is not needed anyway please remove the commas and the periods  

Punctuation and sentence structure have been adjusted as needed.

If any change request turns the project red where does the risk assessment grid for Project Categories 1-4 come in?

As addressed above, the PM Standard neither requires nor recommends that a project be considered red if any change request is submitted.

How does this change impact IV & V?

There was no change to or impact on the IV&V process.

Page 18

4.3.3 should secretaries be capitalized -

All sections with bullets:

4.3.4 – 5 , 5.3, 5.4.2, 5.4.2.2, 5.6.3 , 12.1 remove all punctuation following bullets they are not sentences

Punctuation and sentence structure have been adjusted as needed.

Should there be a process flow figure for change controls?

There are two process flows for change requests: one for nominal changes and one for significant changes.

12.2.6 middle of paragraph has a strikethrough

Punctuation and sentence structure have been adjusted as needed.