Program Transformation

About ETS  Program Transformation

Program Transformation (PT) was established in 2022 as a result of Act 88, SLH 2021.  The PT provides centralized consulting services to assist State of Hawaiʻi executive branch departments and attached agencies with their department-led IT projects. The PT is comprised of experienced professionals who provide expertise in project management. The scope of services provided depends on customer needs and may include self-service project management tools and a la carte consulting services.  The team works with department staff to determine project needs during the planning phases or execution phases of a project, and engages with the department on Independent Verification and Validation services.

 

Self-Service Training Registration, Tools, Templates, and Best Practices

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Training

PT focuses on training State personnel in project management and its related disciplines with the goals of 1) enhancing employee development and retention of the State IT workforce, and 2) increasing the chances of successful project outcomes. PT’s training are designed as “pathways” comprised of multiple courses that progressively lead to full certifications for State IT personnel.  The training pathways that PT offers currently are:

  • Project Management
  • Business Analysis

New training pathways are being developed in these disciplines:

  • Organizational Change Management
  • Quality Assurance
  • Testing
  • Training

Project Consulting Services

PT can provide guidance and tools for departments to conduct many common project management activities including:

Concept Studies

  • Cost-Benefit Analysis: The analytical process of comparing the projected costs of a project with the anticipated benefits associated with it, in order to determine if the project makes sense from a business standpoint.
  • Business Process Survey: The data gathering exercise to identify and document business processes that are upstream, in, and downstream of the scope of the project.  Business processes involved in a survey may be centralized in the department that will run the project, or may involve external stakeholders, customers, or the public. The exercise helps locate business processes that may be impacted by a project, and may involve business process re-engineering.

Requirements Gathering, Initiation and Planning

  • Requirements Gathering: The crucial process of gathering and documenting all technical and non-technical (business) requirements in detail, so that any solution that is procured meets the State of Hawaiʻi’s needs. This is the bedrock for any vendor contract, to determine the correct budget and schedule.
  • Project Scoping: The process of determining the right scope for a project’s needs, factoring in technical, functional, organizational change management, testing, training, communications, staffing, and operations and maintenance.
  • Project Budgeting: How to set a budget for a project, how to request Capital Improvement Project (CIP) funds, how to track a expenditures and report your project’s budget.
  • Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Development: The process of determining at a project’s onset, what benchmarks would show that it will be successful. What quantifiable measures will there be at the end?  How many customers is it expected to serve once fully operational? How much money will it save? How many pieces of paper will it save?
  • Organizational Change Management (OCM) Strategy: Developing a strategy specific to your project that addresses the people-centered aspects of changes; who is impacted and how, how to facilitate communication to build support, how to increase ownership and promote leadership for changes to occur, and how proactively identify and address resistance to change.
  • Project Charter: Documenting the reason for project, business drivers, mission/goals, who the sponsor(s) will be, how the project will be governed, who the key project team members are, the scope, schedule, budget, key performance indicators, establishing an escalation path, a change control process, and risk management process.
  • Stakeholder Identification and Management: Determining who a project’s stakeholders are, what their interests are in seeing a project succeed, how they will be impacted by changes brought about by the project, and establishing regular communication with the stakeholders to manage their expectations.

Project Execution

  • Requirements Tracing: Constructing a method to track all of the requirements initially developed for a project, through the design, development, and implementation of those requirements, to prove that all in-scope requirements are documented as being met by the end of the project.
  • Business Process Re-engineering: Taking a holistic approach to business process changes that are necessary as the result of a change in technology, how to identify the changes, how to document and communicate them, and how to set up a cycle of continuous improvement using the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control methodology (DMAIC).
  • Change Control Establishment: Setting up quality assurance processes for changes, how to document functional and technical changes, and how to establish a governance process to review and adopt desired changes.
  • Risk Management: The process of identifying risks versus issues, documenting them, assigning a risk severity, devising a risk mitigation strategy, and communicating risks to stakeholders.

System Assembly and Integration

  • Development Documentation: How to properly document development work so that it can be understood once you’re live and in production.
  • Scope Management: Techniques to control “scope creep” to ensure that the project stays on time and on budget, and how to work with stakeholders when scope changes are justified.
  • Test Plan Development: Planning to ensure test coverage for a project including, system test, unit test, integration test, smoke test, and user acceptance testing, how to involve others in testing, how to document and report results and metrics to determine phase gate acceptance.
  • Data Conversion Strategy: What to consider when determining how data conversion should be handled, how much data is needed and for how long, reporting and data archiving considerations, and what to do with the data that isn’t being converted.

Test and Pre-Deployment

  • Test Script Development: How to write test scripts and document their results to ensure no requirements are missed.
  • Training Plan Development: What to include in a training plan, including identifying the audience, the right methods to deliver training, how to ensure training participation and coverage, techniques for timing your training delivery, and how to measure and test for understanding.

Deployment/Operations and Maintenance

  • Go Live Criteria: The process of developing the criteria for how you will determine if passing a phase gate, or deployment is appropriate, who in the project will be providing sign off for go live criteria, and who has the ultimate decision to go live.
  • Operations and Maintenance Planning: Establishing roles and responsibilities for operations and maintenance after a project is deployed, including support responsibilities, and getting documented buy in from those resources.
  • Knowledge Transfer Plans: Development of knowledge transfer plans to ensure continuity between those who acted as project resources and those who will be responsible for the operations and maintenance, and support for a system in production, including considerations for legacy system replacements.

Project Completion

  • Deliver final KPIs and Metrics: How to show the value of the project, report on measurements of that success, and construct communications for them.
  • Closure Reporting: Documenting a closure report that ensures someone reading it long after project closure understands the results of the project, who was involved in key decisions, what work was left incomplete (if applicable), what risks and issues the project faced, how knowledge transfer, OCM, testing, training were handled, where to find project artifacts (i.e., further archived documentation), and how the project performed in terms of budget, scope, and schedule.
  • Documenting Lessons Learned: Using a “start-stop-continue” method, how to lead an exercise for the project team to identify and document lessons learned by the project and how to communicate them so as to inform your future projects.
  • Archive Files/Documents: Freezing your project documentation and ensuring that you have a place to keep all of your project artifacts for posterity.