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?

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.

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

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Page 13

Better structure:

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

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

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

How does this change impact IV & V?

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

Should there be a process flow figure for change controls?

12.2.6 middle of paragraph has a strikethrough