Recurring Activities

Monitor and Control Project

The purpose of the Monitor and Control Project activity is to ensure that the following aspects of a project are closely and continuously reviewed, evaluated, and that appropriate and timely corrective and preventive actions are taken by the project teams:

• Collect and analyze Statistical Project Management metrics relating to object delivery (including both ITS and Vendor object) and milestone performance etc. This establishes both internal and external control mechanisms. This includes understanding, predicting, and defending project volatility (V1-V8).

• Risks and Issues – Managing Risks and Issues (both internal and Supplier), compliance to OTL standards, Process QA findings. This ensures that Planning and Process Management is well established and controlled.

• Project Performance – Continuously monitoring project performance, identifying root causes, taking preventive/corrective actions, including escalating project risks and issues, and instituting corrective/preventive actions at a project/executive level.

• Reviews – Conducting monthly Senior Management reviews, monthly Business stakeholder reviews, and weekly progress reviews to monitor progress, manage risks and address issues.

• Customer Satisfaction – Evaluating the satisfaction of the business customer and accordingly adjusting the project corrective action.

• Tollgates – Determining continuance to the next phase by examining the project’s continued alignment with the business objectives (see project charter), current status, critical risks, and the plan for remaining object and milestones for the project.

Perform Change Control

Change Management (CM) exists to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for handling changes to systems in order to minimize the number and impact of any related incidents because of a change.

In practice, any change to a production environment that could affect a service used by IT Services customers should go through change management, which includes:
Build Activity - server or service creation / deployment, DNS, Alias, Redirection - and many others Testing Activity, Go Live Activity, Removal Activity.

Peer Review

The purpose of Peer Review(s) of projects or specific objects is to find defects, check conformance to specifications and standards, verify completeness and correctness, assess understandability and maintainability, demonstrate quality of critical or high-risk components, and collect data for process improvement.

There are three ways that a Peer Review can be conducted:

• Offline - Independent project or object review in which reviewers assess product quality individually and communicate their feedback (Review Results) through e-mail or virtual collaboration.

• Structured – Independent project or object review in which reviewers assess product quality individually followed by a formal meeting where a skilled moderator documents the reviewers’ collective assessment of product quality.

• Walkthrough – A collaborative review in which the project or object and the reviewers focus on real-time feedback, defect identification and, to the extent possible, defect resolution.

Corrective Action

The purpose of Corrective action refers to any activity or actions to alter the course of a specific task or project that may have lost focus or somehow deviated form the pre-specified direction it was intended to take. The corrective actions depend on the nature of variances/overruns, and for all practical purposes, may involve some or all of the following:

• Define the Problem: What occurred, where and when was it identified, when did it begin, and how significant is it?

• Understand the Process: What were the process steps that should have been carried out before the problem was found?

• Identify Possible Causes: If they did not occur as planned, which of the process steps could have caused the problem?

• Collect Data: What information could indicate which of the possible causes actually occurred in a way that would create the problem?

• Analyze Data: What does the data indicate about which of the possible causes did or did not contribute?

• Identify Possible Solutions: What changes to the processes of project planning and execution might keep those processes from failing in the future?

• Select Solutions: Which of the possible solutions identified are the most viable?

• Implement Solutions: Plan and carry out the selected solutions.

• Evaluate the Effects: Were the solutions implemented and have they worked?

• Institutionalize the Change: Update project management guidelines and tools to ensure that future projects are carried out in alignment with the improved processes.