This document aims to provide guidelines on project management to users who will participate in any IT projects with OGCIO.

A structured set of project management practice, originally designed specially for managing projects in IT environments is being widely used in the development. PRINCE (Projects in Controlled Environments, the methodology developed by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA)) has been referred during the development of such practice. The method is currently being supported by OGC (the Office of Government Commerce, UK). This document provides guidelines on how, where and when users can participate effectively in a IT project.

The practice includes a number of components that are applied within the appropriate activities, e.g. organization, planning, risk management and control. The responsibilities of user on those components are highlighted as follows :

Organization

Users will participate in the Project Steering Committee (PSC) which owns and provides direction to the project. In particular, users will act as the executive user and application user such that respective interests can be protected. If required, users may be assigned the Project Assurance (PA) role to monitor specific areas in the project.

Planning

Users are required to plan for their user resources for the preparation of user products and requirement collection.

Controls

The executive user should also grant 'Tolerance' to the project manager. It is the room or spare capacity to handle exception without necessary asking for additional time, budget or direction from the PSC. This reduces administrative effort to be spent by the PSC & project manager. At the end of that stage, users as members of the PSC, should review the situation and authorize the next stage only if they are satisfied with the project progress. The business case of the project should also be reviewed. This ensures that the project are running as planned and over-commitment can be avoided.

Users will also participate in Quality Management on the products of the project.

Click here to download PDF file of User Guide on Project Management Document (171KB)

( To view and print the PDF document, you need to use an Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please click here to download if necessary. )