University of Virginia IT Project Management Guidelines

The University is committed to continuously improving the delivery of IT solutions within budget, on schedule, within scope and in such a way as to best contribute to accomplishing the University's strategic mission. To this end, an IT Project Management Methodology has been developed to assist IT project leaders in planning and managing their projects.  A toolkit of templates and guidelines is provided to facilitate the delivery of IT solutions within budget, on schedule and within scope.

For any project, it should be the goal of the project manager to consider these guidelines and to take appropriate actions to ensure the success of the project. This should include both the preparation of documentation and the establishment of a plan for oversight appropriate to the complexity of the project.

Assessment of the complexity of a given project should be the responsibility of the project manager, in consultation with the project's sponsor. The Complexity Tool  is provided to help project managers with this assessment.

The Project Tailoring Checklist is provided to facilitate discussion between project managers and project sponsors regarding the appropriate level of documentation and governance. Recommendations are provided for various complexity levels.  For low-complexity projects, the full documentation package could be as brief as 2-3 pages. The documentation for high-complexity projects, on the other hand, could easily run to hundreds of pages.

In addition, the Security Review for Projects Questionnaire facilitates identification of security requirements for a given Information Technology Project by helping project teams think through a variety of potential risks such as highly sensitive data exposure, outsourcing of Mission Critical IT services, and so on.