ITI Project Brief - v 2022

This project brief has guidance, prompts and tips for many of the sections.

Please remove/edit these as they are there to help authors in writing the document and for project teams to consider but not suitable for the final version of the brief.

Any significant work we need to explicitly state we are not doing (that some stakeholders may assume or expect that we will).

Summarise - What we are aiming to do and deliver, by when.

What are we aiming to ultimately deliver that will be key to the measure of the success of this project - but potentially any significant other things along the way (that may outlive the project).

What are our objectives and what deliverables are part of them.

Driven by the Deliverables and Objectives. Do we have objective measures that we can point to to say the project has been a success (typically we said we would deliver X and we have).

State the known requirements that drive the project.

Who has set this requirement (who owns the requirement).

Ideally we set these as MoSCoW:

MUST - we would see the project as failing totally or partially if these are not achieved

SHOULD - we have a high expectation that these will be doable with planned work and budget - but if necessary these can be descoped

COULD - if all goes very well, these might be possible

WON'T - we want to be explicit about certain things that people might expect us to deliver but we want to be clear we won't deliver

Which deliverables will fully or partially satisfy the requirement?

The benefits that the deliverables will enable or act as a catalyst in making happen. These benefits may be immediate or may be realised after the project has closed.

Project will have these governance roles by default. Change as appropriate.

If the project has a project board for governance then list its composition here:

For medium and large projects, state any tolerances for budget/timeline/scope beyond which point the Project Manager must request approval of the change from the Sponsor and / or the Board. For all projects, check if there is a tolerance on budget/timeline/quality for escalating to programme/portfolio manager.

For small projects and project teams, state the estimated effort - build and test, project management.

For medium and large projects, an estimate can be added to the Estimation Log and revised as project progresses.

Also estimate costs of hardware, software, licenses, travel, other.

Check the Forward Look and Annual Plan on ITI Sharepoint to see the project's priority within programme and portfolio (and reflect this also on the project info section of the website). Confirm that we have funding for this project.

The project team : who manages the team, lead and other technical people, business analysts, lead and other representatives, people in other areas of the University who will be involved in analysis, testing, acceptance and service handover.

The milestones are a key tool in ensuring that the project process itself is followed as set out by ITI, and that the product deliverables are to the required Quality.

Edit this template to list the key Milestones and who signs off on these milestones. Add milestones for Security, Accessibility,  UX, as required.

For medium and large projects, a project plan - MS Project, Gantt, or other - can be added to the Plan Log and revised as project progresses. The approach can be stated here.

You can also mention the approach the project is taking to set, measure and confirm the quality of the deliverables

What are the key underlying assumptions for the project that underpin the planning? For example, that the requirements we have outlined are complete, that all our stakeholders have been identified, that the software we are using is ready and configured, that we have a ready to use TEST environment.

Are there constraints on this project? For example, specialist skills are needed, having to deliver in certain windows through the academic year, we need to share a TEST environment with other developers?

The project manager will ensure that the project team will review the risk log at every team meeting, and project owners update their risks at least once a month or more as appropriate to the project.

The project manager will ensure all changes to cost/timeline/scope must be recorded in the issue log, and reflected in miletones log, budget and estimations, and the project Scope Change log.

Does the ITI Lessons Learned (see ITI Projects Sharepoint) indicate any issues or risks from previous projects? Is any other previous experience pertinent?

Are there other projects or work that this project is dependent on to start or possibly interact with at a later stage - or vice-versa that depend on this project.

Are we depending on certain events to take place?

Are we dependent on suppliers, or product releases?

For projects with an array of external stakeholders, a Communication Plan can be created and made available on the ITI Sharepoint space if preferred.

Also confirm that :

Project Sponsor and Project Manager meeting schedule has been agreed with Sponsor.

Project Team meetings schedule has been arranged (these may be combined with Sponsor meetings).

Check the ITI Annual Planning Engagement with Stakeholders on ITI Sharepoint to see the level of engagement our partners expect for your project

Check the ITI Forward Look to see if your project wil be using the Major Governance Toolkit.

Which activity does the project contribute to? The project could be one or more of R/G/T

This sets out the Sponsor responsibilities on this project - please review and amend as appropriate for this project and agree with Sponsor