Government Technology - April 2008 - (Page CA6)

which projects should have priority for funding and staffing. “It should really enhance IT governance for the City.” Cosgrave expects PPM to have a big impact on his department’s effectiveness and ability to deliver services. Although ﬁgures won’t be available until later, cost reductions are also expected. “I think we’re going to get very good savings, very good beneﬁt out of this,” Cosgrave said. DoITT has hundreds of projects going on at any one time. Cosgrave said if just a few of those projects are better managed, the savings could be substantial. The Right Choices Cosgrave believes CA Clarity™ PPM will assist his department in choosing the right projects, manage risks and allocate resources. Better visibility across all projects could help eliminate redundant technologies. There could also be better handoffs of projects between organizations. Cosgrave expects to see around a 10 percent improvement in productivity. Cordell Schachter is DoITT’s Chief Project Officer and Associate Commissioner. He’s directing DoITT’s CA Clarity™ PPM implementation and helping other agencies do the same. Schachter said getting project information into CA Clarity™ PPM allows everyone from project managers to executives to access the information they need. The tool also requires managers to be thorough. “Clarity makes you document your workﬂow, from the project’s idea stage through the decision gate. It also helps determine whether the project offers the proper return on investment to proceed for the level of risk, and the amount of resources that it needs. Finally it enables visibility to each project’s implementation, control activities and closure activities,” Schachter said. is to reduce either the likelihood or the impact of that risk.” DoITT also conﬁgured CA Clarity™ PPM so it can easily show executives which projects need extra attention. “We’ve created a system called the ‘Project Health Scorecard,’ which provides a quantitative assessment across about a half-dozen categories with factual criteria, using Clarity as the mechanism where information is entered and the assessment is made,” said Schachter. “From there, we’ve created dashboards that allow executives and managers to scan projects and their scores.” The tool also helps keep all projects aligned with the Mayor’s “themes,” said “Clarity makes you document your workﬂow, from the project’s idea stage through the decision gate.” — Cordell Schachter, Chief Project Officer and Associate Commissioner, New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications From there, reports can be produced, performance trends can be observed and DoITT can gauge whether projects are getting the proper return on investment. “Having the information in a database designed to allow this reporting and analysis really only exists in a PPM tool like Clarity,” Schachter observed. Better Tool, Better Alignment Project managers are required to enter data into CA Clarity™ PPM every day. That keeps the project information ﬂowing much faster. It also makes it easier to detect and deal with risk. “The way we’ve conﬁgured the tool requires each project manager to state the risks that are known to them,” Schachter noted. “Once a risk statement is made, we look for a management plan to deal with that risk should a trigger event occur. And part of that management strategy Cosgrave. Projects, and sometimes even tasks, are tagged to speciﬁc themes and desired outcomes from the Mayor’s overall direction for the City. “Making sure we’re aligned with the priorities of the Mayor, the Deputy Mayors and agency heads is absolutely critical to what we’re doing here,” Cosgrave said. As with many public-sector entities, PPM is the answer for New York City. “It’s a way to keep tabs on what’s going on across a hundred different agencies in the City, as well as the hundreds of projects that my own organization is taking on at any given time,” said Cosgrave. “It’s pretty signiﬁcant, in terms of the number of events we’re trying to track here. We have a responsibility to our customers — the City and its taxpayers — to maximize our IT investments, and we look to PPM and Clarity to help us do that.” ❖ 6 ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - April 2008

Government Technology - April 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Freeze Frame How Safe Is Your Data? Easy Street Gadget Overload Indiana Overhaul First Person: A Better Bill Data Defense Strength in Numbers Public Storage Products Two Cents Spectrum Personal Computing signal:noise

Government Technology - April 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.