SDLC SOP 1000: Program /
Project Management

Buy Editable SDLC
 


Objective: 
The purpose of this Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is to document the project management infrastructure, reporting relationships and project management activities. Program/Project Managers and the Program Management Office (PMO) deliver project management. 

Scope
This SOP defines the SDLC project management process including structure, relationships and activities associated with the recognition, definition, design, implementation, testing, release, operation and management of a project.

Owner: 
Chief Technology Officer

Sections:

i Definitions
ii Process Flow Diagrams
1 Roles and Responsibilities
2 Metrics
3 Program/Project Management Reporting Structure
4 Procedure Activities
5 Forms
6 Exceptions
7 Tools/Software/Technology Used
8 Attachments

Related SOP's:

1004 Configuration Management
1005 Release Planning
1040 Requirements Definition
1101 Training and Documentation

Get "IT"
ScalabilITy - ReliabilITy
FlexibilITy - AgilITy
LongevITy - QualITy
.doc .xls .ppt .mpp .vsd .htm EdITable; Policies, Processes, Procedures, Projects Tasks, Diagrams, Forms & Files.
 DOWNLOAD
Satisfaction Guaranteed.
-->

SDLC Standard Operating Procedures:

SDLC Framework:

SDLC Gates:

SDLC Roles and Responsibilities:

SDLC Forms:

SDLC Templates:

Notify me via email when
new content is posted here.
Name:
Email:

Your email will not be misused in any way.
Requires double opt-in please white list us.

  Save to DeL.iCio.us

SOP 1000 - Project Management Definitions 

Term Definition/Description
Program/Project Management . The systematic execution of a System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) for a release or projects that have significant impact on an organization’s service delivery.  This procedure oversees the SDLC execution; thus, it relies heavily on defined procedure activities and acceptance criteria for inputs and outputs

Note: Every unit within SDLC interacts with Program/Project Management.  Every release of new and enhanced features and functionality requires the commitment and effort from all departments. 

Project Manager The focal point throughout a project who ensures that the responsible party has completed with quality and comply with defined acceptance criteria.  The Project Manager also acts as the conduit for communicating the progress of the project and decisions made throughout the process to the Project Sponsor, Contracting Organization, and the Performing Organization.
Program Management Addresses oversight for a group of projects.  Program Managers shoulder the responsible for the successful completion of program objectives by supporting and developing project staff.  Reporting at this level provides Executive Management with the information necessary to make informed decisions and execute actions that optimize benefits to the organization.  
Program Manager The tactical manager who facilitates, monitors and communicates the progress and issues in implementing the strategic objectives of an approved program.  The Program Manager works cross-functionally to develop the blueprint that integrates multiple release deliverables that enhance the program’s portfolio.  
PMO The PMO is the organization that consolidates all project plans and reports the status to executive management.  Impacts from individual projects can be seen from an organizational perspective and responded to rapidly.  The PMO is where project and program standards, procedures, policies and reporting are established.  
Business Gate  defined milestone in a project lifecycle when specific requirements must be met in order to make or validate business decisions relating to the project.  
Lock-Down The milestone in a project schedule achieved when agreement exists between the Performing Organizations and the Contracting Organizations for the delivery of a defined project scope of work within a defined schedule at a defined cost.   
Management Phase Review

An event associated with selected business gates where specific decisions concerning the project are made by appropriate levels of management.  Deviations in deliverables or timeframe are handled by convening the Gate 6 Review Board. This group will make any decisions concerning scope, cost, and schedule tradeoffs.  These business gates are:  

  • G-11: Project Strategy Lock-Down  

  • G-10: Requirements Scope Lock-Down  

  • G-6: Project Lock-Down  

  • G-4: Begin Validation  

  • G-2: Begin FOA  

  • G-0: General Availability  

SDLC Business Gates The foundation is Program/Project Management in the SDLC Business Gates.  This Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) begins at project initiation and moves through deployment to the production environment.  
Phase A collection of logically related project activities, usually culminating in the completion of a major deliverable. The conclusion of a project phase is generally marked by a review of both key deliverables and project performance in order to determine if the project should continue into its next phase as defined or with modifications or be terminated and to detect and correct errors cost effectively.  
Program A defined set of projects containing common dependencies, and/or resources and/or objectives overseen by a Program Manager
Project  A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service. A project has a defined scope of work (unique product or service), a time constraint within which the project objectives must be completed (temporary) and a cost constraint.  In the context of SDLC, a project may be one of:  
  • an individual feature
  • a collection of features making a release
  • a collection of product releases making up a portfolio
  • a new product development
System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) A predictable series of phases through which a new information system progresses from conception to implementation.  All of the activities involved with creating and operating an information system, from the planning phase and/or the initial concept to the point at which the system is installed in a production environment.  The major phases are Release Planning, Definition (Requirements and Specifications), Development, Test (Validation), and Deployment.  

Process Flow Diagrams 

Process Gates Overview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click Image to Enlarge

 

Program Management Overview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Click Image to Enlarge

1. Roles and Responsibilities

Role Responsibility
Contracting Organization

The Contracting Organization contracts with the performing organization to develop the product using a project discipline.  The Contracting Organization represents two departments: Product and Technical Support.  Product is divided into Sales and Advertising, Marketing and Product, and Strategic Development.  A brief description of each area follows.

  • Sales and Marketing: The area that sells to clients/customers in both the domestic and international markets.

  •  Marketing and Product: This area manages the portfolio of features and functionality for outbound marketing.

  • Strategic Development: Research and Development group viewing opportunities in emerging markets and up-selling existing accounts.

  • Technical Support: Technical Support performs two roles in the current environment: Training and customer support.  As the Service Organization they provide customer support to end users (first level).  In their role as the Training Organization they provide training to field and service engineers.
Project Manager The focal point throughout a project who ensures that the responsible party has completed with quality and comply with defined acceptance criteria.  The Project Manager also acts as the conduit for communicating the progress of the project and decisions made throughout the process to the Project Sponsor, Contracting Organization, and the Performing Organization.
Customer A Customer is the individual or organization who will use the project product.  Note that there is a distinction for SDLC between the true customer and the Contracting Organization that acts as the customer’s representative within SDLC
Office of the Chief Executive (OCE) The Office of the Chief Executive is the executive management team at SDLC.  They establish business strategy and commission projects.
Owner

The Owner oversees the completion of work at a gate.  They may be from the Product, Content, Technical Support, or Development areas depending on the project activities underway.  The Project Sponsor assigns owners at the beginning of a project.

 

Each gate has an Owner who is accountable for tracking the gate requirements, maintaining the status of the gate and taking corrective action to ensure that the gate is met in a timely manner.  The gate owner is also responsible for convening a meeting of the appropriate review board to approve passage of the gate. In the case of gates that have associated management phase reviews (see glossary), the gate owner convenes the review meeting and facilitates the decision making that is required at that gate.  In the event that an exception arises at a gate that does not have any associated management phase review, the owner is responsible for escalating the issue to the appropriate management phase review board for resolution.
Performing Organization The Performing Organization is generally the Engineering Department.  The Engineering Department consists of Development (Sustaining, Advanced and Strategic), Validation/Quality Assurance, Operations (OCC, Release Engineering, Database Administration, Network and Operations Engineering), Systems Engineering/Architecture and project management.
Program Manager

The Program Manager is the individual who oversees multiple projects that are related by a type of service delivery or by feature and functionality.  The Program Manager is accountable for the program and is empowered by the Office of the Chief Executive to make decisions affecting the successful outcome of the program.

 The Program Manager takes an enterprise view.  The Program Manager is responsible for determining the schedule for deployment of company resources and achieving the objectives of a specific program.  The role includes the following additional responsibilities:

  •  Managing project managers

  •  Producing milestone progress reports

  •  Initiating issue and risk mediation

  •  Scheduling and conducting status meeting

         - Preparing status reports

         - Ensuring the project is on time, within budget program deliverables.
Program Management Office (PMO)

The Program Management Office (PMO) monitors, supports and reports on SDLC's programs and projects.  Program Managers provide defined periodic updates to the PMO.  The PMO consolidates the efforts of all programs and technology specific projects and delivers these reports to the OCE.

 The PMO is responsible for issuing standards and guidelines for planning, tracking, and reporting, and for providing project support to individual project teams.  Accountability for project delivery will remain with the individual Project Manager and Program Manager.
Program Manager

The Project Manager is accountable for the project and must be empowered to make decisions affecting the successful outcome of the project responsible for managing a project.  This should not be confused with the project management function that exists within many organizations.

Project Managers are responsible for determining the deployment schedule for their specific project.  This role includes the following additional responsibilities:

  • Reviewing progress reports

  • Taking corrective action in problem solving

  • Scheduling and conducting status meetings

  • Preparing status reports

  • Ensuring that change control procedures are being followed
Review Board

The Review Board is composed of representatives from both the Performing and Contracting Organizations, as well as the Project Sponsor, Project Manager and Program Manager.  Review Boards assess the deliverables at each gate in the System Development Life Cycle to insure that requirements have been met.  Also, the Review Board’s specific knowledge of the project’s goals and status allow it to make informed decisions to which they are held accountable.

 

Milestone/Gate reviews provide the mechanism for the management of the Performing Organization and the Contracting Organization to make decisions concerning the scope, cost and schedule of the project.  At each review, the members of the Review Board are required to make decisions that are in the best interests of SDLC.  These decisions may involve making tradeoffs to arrive at an optimal decision.  It may be necessary to omit or remove scope in order to satisfy cost and schedule constraints.  Additional cost may be approved to maintain scope and schedule commitments.  A schedule delay may be agreed upon to enable required scope to be delivered within existing budgets.  Each case is unique and must be considered on its specific merits.

 
Service Organization The Service Organization is the unit that that provides deployment support services to the Contracting Organization for all SDLC products.  Services include provision and support of deployment tools, software load support, problem resolution, phone support and deployment planning support.  At SDLC the Service Organization is generally Technical Support.
Training Organization The Training Organization is the organization that provides customer installation and operations training to the Contracting Organization for all SDLC products.   This generally refers to Technical Support.

2. Metrics

Program/Project Management metrics are focused on the measurement of cycle times and defects.  Measurements provide the foundation to quickly identify, isolate and remediate inefficient results from activities that do not meet expected performance levels.

Metric Description
Cycle Time The number of days or hours it takes to complete requirements for a SDLC Business Gate and/or milestone.
Defects Instances of failure to pass specific tests or quality measures or to meet specification/acceptance criteria. These are recorded and assessed throughout a project and reported at the end of the project.  
Change Agents Individuals who analyze a process and recommend ways to improve it, successful or not in its adoption, will be reported to Engineering Department management.  These individuals will receive recognition for their effort to compress cycle times and/or improve quality.

3. Program/Project Management Reporting Structure

The structure above represents a reporting structure, not an organization chart. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Office of the Chief Executive is the executive management team at SDLC.  It establishes business strategy and commissions projects.  Project Sponsors are charged with developing a concept into defined requirements and scope, and ultimately ushering the defined deliverable through project milestones.  Program Managers oversee a portfolio of projects ensuring their successful delivery and integration into the SDLC environment.  Project Managers oversee the day-to-day execution of work of specific projects, ensure that acceptance criteria are met, and manage the gate Review Board activities.

 

Project progress, issues and risks are reported to Program Managers who oversee a portfolio of related projects.  The Program Manager oversees escalation, mitigation and resolution of project barriers and delays whenever a Project Manager requires assistance.  Program Managers provide progress reports to the Program Management Office where enterprise level project plans are produced and reviewed.  Impacts across program and projects are identified and reported by the Program Management Office.

 

Certain Engineering Department technical activities fall outside the activities specific to a project.  These activities (e.g., hardware and software maintenance, tools and utilities, etc.) are reported directly to the Program Management Office.  The Office of the Chief Executive assesses these time and resource requirements via the enterprise level project plan maintained by the PMO.

Activity Description
PMO Level Reporting

PMO meets weekly with Program Managers to review status reports and share information about the activities of other projects and programs.  The weekly Program Reports data are analyzed and used to prepare the OCE Status Report.   The PMO presents the report to OCE members.  The PMO attends OCE meetings to address concerns and solicit assistance for Program Manager requests for support and/or intervention.  Action items from the OCE meeting are communicated to the PMO within 2 days (or as appropriate). 

 As part of the OCE’s PMO Report technology projects outside of formal programs are reported upon.  Prioritization and integration into the consolidated/enterprise project plan is determined.  The PMO reports back to the technology Project Manager the results of the meeting.
Program Level Reporting The Program Manager consolidates individual project reports from each reporting Project Manager into a Program Report for the PMO. Program Reports focus on the enterprise and as such present milestones, opportunities, risks and issues that are effecting efforts.  In cases where OCE intervention is requested, course of action recommendations are included. 
Project Level Reporting

Each week the Project Manager completes a Project report that is provided to the Program Manager. At weekly status meetings Program and Project Managers’ review the project report and strategize on approaches to address-identified risks and issues.  Action items are developed and agreed to by the Program and Project Managers.  These action items are tracked and reported on the weekly Project Report.

Technology projects outside program delivery are reported directly to the PMO by the technology Project Manager using the same reporting mechanism as above.

4. Procedure Activities

Gate/Activity Description

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click Image to Enlarge
G-12: Project Start

  • Business Objective: Declare the start of the project. This gate is used to kick-off finalization of the feature set and project strategy.

  • Owner: Program Sponsor

  • Review Board: N/A
Designate Program Sponsor and Project Manager   Project Start begins with the designation of a Program Sponsor and Project Manager. The Program Sponsor is designated by OCE. The Program Manager assigns the Project Manager.    
G-11: Project Strategy Lock-Down  

  • Business Objective: Approve a set of features and project strategy

  • Owner: Project Manager

  • Review Board: Program Sponsor, Program Manager, Project Manager, Contracting Organization(s), and Performing Organization(s)  

 
Project Manager   The Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the documents indicated in the next activity are completed with quality and meet the acceptance criteria defined in the Release Planning Procedure (SOP 1005))   

Organizations:

  • Project Sponsor

  • Contracting

  • Performing  

 

Program Sponsor (OWN)

  • Project Strategy including: Timeline, R&D Budget, Affordability Percentage, Scope of Work definitions and Anchor Objectives.

Contracting Organization (OWN)

  • Market Requirements Scope of Work

Performing Organization (OWN)

  • High Level Effort Estimate  

Project Manager   The Project Manager establishes a preliminary project plan incorporating the project strategy and high-level effort estimates received within this gate. Once the above documents are accepted by the receiving organization the Project Manager will call the Review Board to session and provide evidence that all requirements have been met for Gate 11.  
Review Board  

Establish project strategy and the initial project constraints of scope, cost and schedule utilizing such factors as R & D Budget, Affordability Models and Anchor Objectives.

Upon approval, all materials are communicated to the Contracting and Performing Organizations.  The communication is focused at the approved anchor objectives, project strategy, initial project constraints and scheduling. The Project Manager is responsible for communications to all participating project areas.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click Image to Enlarge
G-10: Requirements Scope Lock-Down  

  • Business Objective: Approve the Scope of Work for which the organization will commit to develop requirements.

  • Owner: Project Manager

  • Review Board: Program Sponsor, Program Manager, Project Manager, Contracting Organization(s), and Performing Organization(s)  

Project Manager  

The Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the following documents are completed with quality and meet acceptance criteria defined in the Release Planning Procedure (SOP 1005).

Contracting Organization (OWN)

  • Initial Portfolio Scope

  • Business Plan Impact Assessment

  • Scope of Work

Performing Organization (OWN)

  • Project Resource Plan  

Review Board   Review the results of the concept phase and commit to the definition and planning of a project.  Target delivery windows may be established, but this does not constitute a commitment to deliver the project as it is defined at this point.  The additional definition and planning which takes place during the definition phase will increase knowledge about the scope, cost and schedule of the project which may result in changes to any or all of those parameters.  
Review Board   The Review Board’s acceptance of the approved documents by the Receiving Organization moves each SOW document to the Development Function of the Performing Organization for analysis.  
Project Manager   The Project Manager ensures coordination between Contracting and Performing Organizations.  Project Managers facilitate meetings and document meeting outcomes.  This effort is focused at reducing cycle time and maintaining the highest level of common understanding between parties.  Further, the Project Manager will refine the project plan incorporating data available.  
G-9: Definition Phase Plan Approved  

  • Business Objective:      Approve the plan to execute the definition phase so that the project’s business requirements (scope, timeframe and cost) are met

  • Owner: Project Manager

  • Review Board: Program Sponsor, Program Manager, Project Manager, Contracting Organization(s), and Performing Organization(s)  

Project Manager  

The Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the following documents are completed with quality and meet acceptance criteria defined in the Requirements Definition Procedure (SOP 1040).

  • Plan for the Definition Phase – Owner: Project Manager  

Organizations:

  • Performing

  • Contracting  

 

In order to complete the plan for the Definition Phase, the Project Manager requests and receives the items listed below from various areas of both the Contracting and Performing Organizations.  Acceptance criteria for each item listed are defined in the Requirements Definition Procedure (SOP 1040).

 Contracting and Performing Organizations (CON)

  • Detailed Schedule

  • Resources/Costs Assigned

  • Capital Budget

  • Risk Plan Developed

Validation Function of the Performing Organization (CON)

  •  Quality Plan

Operations Function of the Performing Organization (CON)

  • Configuration Plan  

Project Manager  

The deliverables for G-9b contribute to the development of the project’s communication plan and project plan by the Project Manager. At this point the Project Manager ensures that all known assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and risks are reflected in the project plan.

The Project Manager sends recommendations to minimize the impact from assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and risks to the Program Sponsor.  The Program Sponsor supports the resolution and/or mitigation of project barriers by working with OCE and/or Unit Managers.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click Image to Enlarge

G-8: System Requirements Definition Approved

  •  Business Objective: Obtain approval of the system requirements definition(s) from the Contracting Organization(s).

  • Owner: Project Manager

  • Review Board: Program Manager, Project Manager, Contracting Organization(s), and Performing Organization(s)

Project Manager

The Project Manager facilitates the dialog necessary between all parties that participated in the definition of SOW documents for the Development Function of the Performing Organization to complete Systems Requirements Specifications. 

The Project Manager has responsibility for ensuring full disclosure of features, functionality and technical constraints that impact the project scope approved at Gate 10. 

Review Board

The Review Board reviews the approved System Requirements Specifications. 

G-7: Lock-Down Level Estimates Complete

  • Business Objective: Complete the estimates and scope refinement necessary for Lock-Down.

  • Owner: Project Manager

  • Review Board: Program Manager, Project Manager, Contracting Organization(s), Architecture Function of the Performing Organization(s), and Development Function of the Performing Organization(s)

Project Manager

The Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the documents in the next activity are completed with quality and meet acceptance criteria defined in the Requirements Definition Procedure (SOP 1040).

Organizations:

  • Performing

  • Contracting

 

Performing Organization (OWN)

  • Refined Resources Estimates

Architecture Function of the Performing Organization (OWN)

  • Estimation Documentation

Development Function of Performing Organization (OWN)