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Project Initiation Checklist

Note: This checklist assumes that the project has been approved by Randy Livingston, the CFO. This means:

  • A  Project Charter has been written and a resource plan has been attached.
  • The Project Charter has received cross-functional (AS/Business) input as well as input from Ganesh Karkala.
  • The Project Charter has been presented to Randy Livingston and it has been approved.
  • The approved version of the Project Charter has been uploaded to Google Shared drives.

1
PMO/Communications

  • Have you submitted a JIRA task in ASTools for project creation for the following tools?
  • Have you identified and set up your standing project update/status meetings?
    The actual number and frequency of meetings will depend upon the project's complexity. They typically include a weekly technical internal meeting, a weekly project team meeting with both technical and business team  members, a biweekly business owners/project managers meeting, and a monthly steering/sponsor meeting. For a good sample of project meetings, refer to the SeRA Governance page.
  • Have you prepared a Project Plan (opens in a new window)?
  • Have you set up the executive summary report in Confluence?
    A template can be found in Confluence or downloaded as a Word doc.
  • Have you created an email distribution list for your project? If you are using an existing distribution list, are new team members included?
  • Are you familiar with the SIT and UAT exit criteria?
    • Sample of SIT exit criteria (reveals a somewhat messy transition): FSS
    • Sample of UAT exit criteria (much cleaner transition): R12
    • Standard exits are P1 - P3, though in the samples above, exceptions were apparently made. This is okay so long as both the business and UIT agree and the request is reasonable give project pressures and quality goals.
    • Note: Test summaries are no longer required.
  • If your project is SaaS, have you reviewed the PMO SaaS Guidelines and applied them to your project as applicable?
  • Have you made a copy of the Smartsheet Project Tracker Template (opens in a new window) for your project?
  • Have you scheduled/held a project kickoff meeting?

2
Resource Planning

  • Have you confirmed your resource requirements in a project resource plan (opens in a new window)? An Excel version is also available.
  • Have you taken your resources' vacation plans into account? Note: Not required for resource cost estimation, only for task completion.
  • Have you confirmed resource needs with the appropriate resource managers, i.e. Practice Area Directors, their Department Leads, and the Director of QA?

3
Environment Planning

  • Have you worked with release manager and/or DBAs to line up your environments for the entire project?
  • Do you have special requirements for your environments, such as specific effective dates of the data, refresh cycles, etc.? Have you communicated these to the release manager and/or DBAs?
  • Have you documented the approximate hardware requirements, e.g., type and number of servers, type and amount of storage?
  • Does the solution require load balancing, firewalls, WebAuth, and/or Shibboleth integration?
  • Have you discussed high-level infrastructure support needs with the AS Infrastructure/Operations manager?

4
On-boarding New Staff

  • Have you initiated the on-boarding process for new staff?
  • Have you requested access to tools for new staff? ET Tools Confluence.

    This includes:

    • A JIRA project plus a group for your project team.
    • A Confluence group if you will be restricting access to your space.
    • Unanet. Make sure to remind your team about the deadline for time sheet submission, which is every Monday at midnight.
    • AS PMO Google Workgroup or directly to your project folder in Google Shared drives.
    • Development tools.
    • SQL/DB access for technical staff (PMs stay away).
    • Jabber or Zoom IM (choose only one for your project).
  • Have new staff been given a quick tutorial on how your project team is using the aforementioned tools?
  • Have you ensured that staff are familiarized with Microsoft 365 email and calendar, StanfordWho, and StanfordYou?
  • Has the Desktop Support Team been informed to set up the new staff member's workspace? They require 3 days advance notice.
  • Have new staff been given an office key from the AVP executive admin? Have they received a pass to come into Porter from a side entrance? Do they know about service passes for parking on campus?
  • If you have offshore staff, have you lined up your onshore and offshore resources, identified your offshore PM or coordinator, and established your nightly, semi-weekly, or weekly check-in calls?

5
Development

  • Have you planned enough time for technical specification and code reviews?
  • Have you planned for a reasonable number of change requests (at least 10% of your total development scope)?
  • Have you applied the eighty hour rule, which states that no task, development or otherwise, is greater than 2 weeks in duration?
  • Have you defined a change control process, communicated it, and received commitment to it from all the business and technical team members? Examples of the change control process can be found on Confluence or downloaded as a PDF.
  • Have you discussed with your Practice Area Director what his/her policies will be on access by the business to the SIT environment and communicated that clearly to the business?
  • Have you obtained agreement on and planned enough time for conference room pilots/demos?
  • Have you planned specific tasks, with enough time, for unit testing?

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: All projects involving a user interface must ensure accessibility by those with disabilities. UIT standard practice is compliance with WCAG 2.0, Level AA. For more information, see the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview website. For Administrative Systems Project Managers, coordinate with the development lead and QA Director to identify and add the necessary accessibility related project tasks to the project plan.

6
Quality Assurance

  • If your project is an extension of an existing one:
    • Have you reviewed the list of deferred bugs and prioritized the ones you want to include in this project?
    • Have you reviewed the tests from the past testing efforts?
  • Have you thought of time for test planning, test case creation, testing/retesting of fixes in both QA and/or UAT, regression, and exit criteria?
  • Does everyone know the standard definitions for issue priority and severity when logging issues in JIRA?
  • Does everyone know how to move tickets through the JIRA issue management workflow?
  • Have you reviewed the JIRA tips and common mistakes with team members?

7
Information Security

  • Can the solution be configured in compliance with all applicable UIT security standards? Note: Information Security Review is only required for systems that will transmit or store Moderate or High Risk data. For classification definitions, visit the Information Security website.
  • Will the application process, transmit, or store restricted or sensitive data, as defined in Admin Guide, section 6.3?
  • Can access be restricted to VPN users only, or must the application be available to users on non-trusted networks?
  • If this is an upgrade to an existing application, was a security review or assessment ever performed on the existing application?
  • Have you discussed high level security needs with an ISO architect?

8
Campus Readiness

  • Have you assessed the end user impacts of the project?
  • Have you budgeted adequate resources to address the training, communication, and other management needs of your project?
  • Have you consulted UIT Communications during creation of the project charter to explore what change management activities they may be able to support or even take ownership of, depending on project timing and UIT Communications workload?

For more details, see the guidance on Change Management.

9
Finance

  • Have you reviewed the Project Resource Plan and Project Charter Financial with our UIT Shared Services Finance Analyst before presenting the Project Charter for approval? Google Shared drives folder for resource plans.
  • If a purchase requisition is required, have you received a formal vendor quote and submitted it to our UIT Shared Services Finance Analyst? For guidance on contract purchases, visit Fingate.
  • If you are contracting external resources for Enterprise Technology projects, have you confirmed that the supervising manager has submitted a Statement of Work (SOW) via the JIRA Contractor Process?
  • Have you submitted the final version of the approved Project Charter to our UIT Shared Services Finance Analyst via the Google Shared drives folder for project charters?
  • Have you submitted the Software Capitalization Form when you present Project Charters and Funding Memos (if there is any material change to what is capitalized due to the funding memo) to the Google Shared drives folder for CFO office approval?
  • Have you worked with our UIT Shared Services Finance Analyst to be sure that CAPEX vs. non-CAPEX expenses for your project are being charged to the correct PTA tasks and sub-tasks?