How does ITS implement approved projects?
Once a project is assessed and approved, ITS moves projects into implementation. There are three implementation phases to help ensure projects are set up for success, executed well, and wrapped up satisfactorily.
Assign/Plan
This first phase is where we establish a comprehensive project plan. Work is broken down into milestones and associated deliverables, work packages, and tasks. This is used to map out dependencies between components and determine intermediate due dates for milestones.
From there, we make sure the project team understands which items they are responsible or accountable for and when those items need to be completed. This phase is also where we may establish more regular meetings with you and your department to support the work and keep you informed. This phase helps us ensure we are set up to deliver the project on schedule.
Manage
Once we have a project plan, we begin to execute tasks. The Manage phase is all about performing the actual implementation work and keeping the project on track. This phase is where we do software configuration, make changes to existing systems or services, complete development and move things into production, and more.
During this phase, we also provide regular status updates to you and other stakeholders.
Closure
Once all tasks to bring something into production are completed, the project moves into Closure. Closure is where we make sure documentation is written and stored appropriately, perform final cleanup tasks, and have a retrospective about how the project went.
This phase keeps us accountable for the smaller items that help us support new systems or services as well as clean up technical debt from items that are no longer needed. Retrospectives focus both on what went well and what could have gone better and allow us to use what we learn to continually improve our implementations.