Planning and Project Management

IT Partners operates on a six-month planning and prioritization cycle (PPC) to focus our efforts in developing new technology and data products; supporting and updating existing products, platforms, and processes; and improving, maintaining, and monitoring our technology and data infrastructure. 

Once the plan of work is set for a PPC, significant new project requests are not considered until the next PPC.

We engage college and unit leadership to identify the plan of work for two PPCs each fiscal/academic year: July-December (calendar year Q3/Q4) and January-June (calendar year Q1/Q2). Engagement and prioritization is completed in May-June for the July-December PPC and Nov-Dec for the January-June PPC. Unit priorities are taken into account as IT Partners works with Gies senior leadership to finalize the plan of work for the upcoming PPC. 

Our work falls into one of these categories:

• New Product: Implementation of new vended platforms or the development of custom applications or data products. 
• Updated Version: Added or revised features to existing platforms, applications, or data products. 

• Ad Hoc-Support: Low-resource requests from units that don't require a full project plan and are normally time-sensitive. We build time into our planning cycles for these requests so that we can be responsive to emerging needs. ITP project management staff will determine whether a new request made in the middle of a PPC qualifies as an ad-hoc request or needs to be considered as a project for the next PPC. 
• Cyclical Maintenance: Support for cyclical processes in the college that require effort on a regular cadence. 
• Consulting: Business process improvements, training, and other consulting activities.
• Infrastructure Update: Design, development, improvement, monitoring, security, and maintenance of application and data infrastructure.
• Internal Logistics: Work to improve internal IT Partners processes and workflows that support our work.

Project Dashboards

You can view a dashboard (opens in new window) with the status of our current plan of work.

The dashboards include 4 tabs to provide you with a complete view of our project work.

Work This Week

The Work This Week tab lists the project milestones we're actively working toward in the current week. Our projects are broken into segments called milestones so that we can communicate progress more frequently and clearly. Milestones for a specific project are generally sequential, but sometimes can be worked on in parallel. Milestones describe the condition that will exist when the milestone is reached. As such, they are written in the present or present perfect tense and describe the completed state. The milestone statement should not be read as if they are already completed. The % column shows how close we are to achieving the milestone. If we have an estimated date of completion, that is listed under Target Completion. The Milestone Details column describes the work being done to achieve the milestone in more detail. If your project isn't listed on this page, it means we're not actively working on it this week due to competing priorities or other delays. Full project details are available via drill-throughs.

All Projects

The All Projects tab displays a list of all projects in our current planning cycle. Additional project details, including detailed milestones and project deliverables, are available via drill-through. 

Ad Hoc Requests from Clients

The Ad Hoc Requests tab is a list of all ad hoc requests that have been received during the PPC, including the staff member making the request and relevant platform(s). Available filters include target month, task status, project, Gies unit and last modified date.

Internal ITP Tasks

The Internal ITP Tasks tab includes all IT Partners Staff tasks required to support the operations and infrastructure underpinning our application and data solutions. We provide these in the spirit of transparency and to give an idea of the scope of this support. 

Project Brief

The Project Brief is available by drill-through from any of the project lists. It includes high-level details about the project, recent status updates, and a list of all the project milestones and objectives.