Information Technology Self Help

How does University Web Services determine prioritization for new projects?

Project Priority

Project Work should comprise 60-70 percent of the Web Services Department Total Workload. Since this places a limit on the volume of Project work we can accept at any one time, we must employ a Project Prioritization Scheme to determine the best fits for the University Strategic mission.

Definition of a PROJECT:

A project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.
This is NOT the same as a collection of operational tasks. It is important to know the difference.

Clarity:
1 - It has a definite START
2 - It has a definite COMPLETION
3 - It has a clear PLAN and TIMELINE
4 - The outcome is UNIQUE

What this means is that not all our work is PROJECT work.
The remainder falls under the classsfication of OPERATIONAL tasks.
This document is not relative to operations - For more on service requests, please see the Service Prioritization

Priority Scheme:

To accomplish efficient and effective prioritization of the Web Services Project Task load, we will use a basic 5 point ranking system where the highest priority is Â1Â and the lowest is Â5Â as follows:

Official Tier 1 Strategic Initiatives [home page, audience pages, college front pages]
Official Tier 2 Strategic Initiatives [other www template sites]
Special Strategic Events and Activities
Research & Sponsored Program Initiatives
Other requests (student groups, individual faculty support, and other non-strategic initiatives)

Escalation Contingency

Our purpose is to provide the University with World Class Web Presence and to support the Strategic Mission to our best ability. There will be times when this purpose and our role in the bigger picture may not be entirely clear or opinions may differ across department lines.

We will employ a standard escalation process in these case, primarily under the following circumstances:

In any case that the perceived importance or value of the project is not clearly defined by client
In any case that the perceived importance or value of the project is not clearly understood in relation to other candidate projects
In any case where the project selection process is overly complex or involves a wide sweeping group of stakeholders
in any case where a project of high priority includes demands on time or resources that could potentially force another preselected or open projects into a 'Suspension' status.
In any case that a prospective client disagrees with the determination of priority issues by the PM

Prioritization decisions under these situations will be made by group consensus of the University Web Governance Group.