As reported in last week’s Roundup, the state of California has taken steps to improve the way major IT projects are approved. On Wednesday, the Department of Technology issued policy outlining the first stage of a new Project Approval Lifecycle.
According to the department’s Technology Letter-13-02, the Statewide Information Management Manual (SIMM) has been amended to include a section called Stage 1 Business Analysis. “This is intended to ensure projects are undertaken with clear business objectives, accurate costs and realistic schedules,” says the letter.
The overall goal is to streamline the process by which IT projects are developed and approved by reducing the information needed to submit. The model divides the process into stages that result in a certain deliverable required to proceed to the "gate" to the next stage.
“Each stage consists of a set of prescribed, cross-functional, and parallel activities to develop deliverables used as the inputs for the next gate. The gates provide a series of "go/no go" decision points that request only the necessary and known information needed to make sound decisions for that particular point in time,” the letter continues.
Agencies will also be required to submit a Stage 1 Business Analysis for all proposals prior to a feasibility study, regardless of the project’s cost.
Technology Letter 13-02 can be found at http://www.cio.ca.gov/Government/IT_Policy/pdf/13-02/TL13-02-01_Project_Approval_Lifecycle.pdf
