DoE Victoria learns from project management lessons

Working out an IT governance scheme when you have 600,000 users in place is a challenge, but stricter project management has been so successful for the Department of Education in Victoria that the government agency is now adopting the same methodology even for non-IT projects.

In early 2004, the DoE began using a manual process to centralise IT project management across the department, which controls one of the largest IT infrastructures in Australia.

"Our global address list is twice the size of Telstra's," said Tudor Owen, manager for ICT governance and portfolio management in the recently renamed department. "We have a fair number of challenges simply on scalability."

Using ITIL principles and Mercury's IT governance software, the DoE has introduced an automated process for managing all of its IT projects, covering a massive network that incorporates 240,000 PCs and 300 centralised servers.

Prior to introducing the process, the department suffered from "classic" problems like applications being developed without any thought as to their sustainability, Owen told a session at HP's Software Universe conference in Brisbane recently. There was also considerable overlap between projects: at one time, the department had four separate active plans relating to geospatial technologies. "We were able to save a couple of million dollars very quickly just by understanding what was going on," Owen said.

The lack of a total overview also meant that opportunities for synergies were missed. Owen gave the example of separate projects for schools to distribute notebook PCs, set up interactive whiteboards and build wireless networks. Although it would theoretically have been possible to let teachers add content to the whiteboards via those PCs, there was no budget for the required access cards and no suitable security infrastructure for the wireless networks.

Proper governance eliminated those concerns. "We now have a single list of projects across the department," Owen said. After implementing manual controls in May 2004, the department wanted to automate the process using software, but realised that this would be easier to justify in cost terms if the approach was extended beyond IT.

"We came to a strong realisation that it doesn't have to be just IT," Owen said. "That helps to sell it to the business."

The cultural change necessary for consistent governance is always a challenge, but for DoE the resistance came from a somewhat unexpected source.

"We expected it was going to be difficult to get the business to embrace this technology, but because they have all the visibility, they love it," Owen said. "The people we had trouble with were IT."

"All of a sudden it was like a big light being shone on them. They're visible, they're accountable and a lot of them didn't like it." One selling point was the fairer nature of the system, Owen said: "You take the emotion out of the decision, the 'my project is better than your project' argument."

The approach has proved so successful that the priorities automatically applied to projects via the governance system are now deemed acceptable without further examination.

"Business value now determines the priority of the project. The business is now comfortable enough that they don't want us to confirm things. They only want us to go back and check when there's an exception."

The approach is also being extended to non-IT projects such as the department's curriculum assessment unit. "The workflows are basically there and it's underway at the moment," Owen said.

While selling a governance project can take time, it was important to be pragmatic, Owen said.

"We talk all the warm fuzzies about leading people. Sometimes you have to say, 'That's great, but just do it'. You've got to get buy-in, but you've also got to draw the line."

Sufficient levels of investment are also vital, Owen said. "You can't do it on the cheap. Make sure you've got enough money. The reality is this is a huge business process change."

Angus Kidman travelled to Brisbane as a guest of HP.