ECM Project Roles and Responsibilities

By Jacqueline Rodriguez

The roles and responsibilities are important in defining tasks and assignments.

• Each functional department and team member has specific responsibilities that are required for the project to move forward toward a successful goal.

• The project team must be responsible and accountable for completion of the project

• The form of project organization for ECM is a matrix style, which is the methodology defined by the Project Management Office (PMO), used in all Information Technology Service (ITS) run projects

Project Management Office (PMO)

• The PMO strives to deliver excellent services to enable ITS staff to effectively manage projects.

• The PMO provides mentoring and guidance to project managers regarding project management best practices and actual project issues and strategies.

• Uses project management methodology through the complete project management lifecycle.

• An ongoing effort to improve project management processes and improve project success

Executive Steering Committee (ITESC)

• The committee consist of executive senior management and the president of the university

• ITESC has the ultimate approval authority over any IT project.

• ITESC receives all ITS projects for approval.• The ITESC was created to enable customers to

have direct input into the prioritization and scheduling of IT initiatives

Project Review Board (PRB)

• Consist of • Is responsible for reviewing and prioritizing all

work requests that are presented to ITS for application review, installation, development, enhancement or customization.

• PRB reviews and categorizes all business needs and projects by priority.

• PRB submits its prioritization analysis to ITESC for approval.

Program Manager

• The ultimate responsibility of the ECM program lies on the ECM Program Manager

• Responsible for insuring the individual projects are in alignment with the goals of the ECM program".

• Works on the high level stuff, not the individual projects themselves.

Project Manager• In charge of overall project management activities.• Runs each project that is created form the ECM program• Management of project plan, identifying tasks and assignment of

resources. • Completion of tasks in a timely manner• Budget management• Communicates with stakeholders on a weekly basis to ensure

appropriate requirements are met according to schedule• Ongoing status reporting• Management of the consultant relationships• Addresses issues with resource constraints and identifies the need to

escalate an issue• Risk mitigation

Information Technology Service (ITS)

• Their responsibility to the university is to enhance learning, teaching, research, and operations for Loyola University Chicago, higher education, and technology communities.

• Their ECM role is the Executive Stakeholder, Process Architect, Champion and Security.

Security

• Assist to ensure that the security policies, procedures and the achitecture are consistent with Loyola’s security’s policies.

Business Process Architect

• Responsible for working with the ITS staff members, staff and the customer.

• Assist with the development of implementation plan.

• The business process analysis and design.• Works closely with the ECM Administrator to

implement DocFinity application to support the needs of the business.

Champion

• ITS has the role of the Champion for the ECM project

• believes in the ECM project and is willing to argue for its support.

ITS Sponsor

• Primary approval authority for required purchases.

• Addresses issues with project priorities and resource constraints as escalated by the Product owner or Project Manager.

ITS Product Owner

• Primary responsibility is to lead the business review. • Works closely with the ECM Administrator to properly

implement the DocFinity application to support the needs of the business.

• Has the ownership of all application integration design, vendor management and relationships for product support.

• able to make decisions for product configuration and infrastructure and is also responsible for product versioning and upgrade decisions.

ECM Administrator

• Responsible for the administration and configuration of the ECM product.

• Works closely with the Business Process Architect.• Development of ECM documentation, including

training documentation. • Gets together with the ECM Security Administrator

to ensure security levels are defined properly. • Due to this partnership ECM administrator functions

as a backup for the ECM Security administrator.

Imerge

• Is a consultant firm with expertise in ECM• According to the Imerge statement of work,

Imerge is required to be professional at all times, deliver draft and final deliverables in a timely manner to maintain the integrity of the project plan.

• Will assist with stage 0 planning and with the development of required OIT artifacts.

• This includes the overall implementation Plan

Primary Stakeholders

• The primary stakeholders that will be impacted by the ECM project are Undergraduate Admissions, Registration and Records, Accounting, Academic Advising, Financial Aid and Graduate Enrollment.

• Almost each stakeholder has their own functional manager with specific roles and responsibilities toward the ECM project.

Undergraduate Admission

• Responsible for replacing their current imaging application with ECM within the Undergraduate Admissions department.

Academics Affair

• Has the role of Executive Sponsor / Business Owner of the ECM project.

• Primary responsibility is project oversight.

Registration and Records

• Responsible for their subject matter expertise. • They will provide subject matter expertise in

order to guide and give insight to several other departmental functions and the inter-relationship between departments.

Financial Department

• Responsible to process financial forms. • According to the “functional Value and Priority

Grid,” Financial Aid will be able to access images faster and easier.

• The processing of scholarship forms, tuition benefits forms and Federal work study community service forms will be enhanced.

Cons

• A major constraint was the lack of definition in regards to the roles and responsibilities of the functional team members.

• There was minimal information on what the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders were in the ECM project.

• Some stakeholders provided a project definition in regards to the phase that specific functional department was involved in.

Opinion

• A more clearly definition of the roles and responsibilities for all functional team members and stakeholders should have been implemented somewhere in the Project Definition.

• Functional team members need to be assigned roles and responsibilities in order for the project to deliver the system concept.

• The ECM project is a major IT project that will impact a lot stakeholders, departments, users and clients.

• There are a lot of ongoing subprojects within the ECM project due to its significant amount of work, resources and tasks. Therefore, it is imperative that the roles and responsibilities be clearly defined.

Pros• The project organization has a clear methodology direction for the

ECM Project. • The PMO uses project management methodology through the

complete project management lifecycle. Therefore, creating the ITESC and PRB.

• The PRB receives all project requests from ITS functional departments for reviewing and prioritization.

• The PRB then presents the projects to the ITESC for approval according to its priority level.

• A PM is selected for the overall project management of the ITS project.

• This project organization establishes a well defined organize foundation for the ECM project.