Ediburgh University Contributes To UCISA Good Practice Guide For IT Infrastructure Projects

Iain Fiddes, from IS Applications Development Services, has developed a new good practice guide "Delivering Business Benefits From IT Infrastructure Projects" which has been published by the University and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA).

The paper proposes techniques to be used to improve the identification and realisation of business benefits from IT infrastructure projects and includes case studies taken from recent University projects including Shared Academic Timetabling and EUCLID. The paper recommends:

• All IT infrastructure projects be subject to the same benefits scrutiny as any other business project
• Identfying the project deliverables such as improved performance or reliability which will enable business benefits to be realised i.e. the IT Enablers
• Agree the priortity for delivery of the IT Enablers e.g. using the MoSCoW Method see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_Method
• Identify the minimum usable subset of these IT enablers that must be delivered for the project to be considered a success
• Scheduling the project so that delivery of the minimum useable subset of IT Enablers is the first priority for the project team
• Resourcing the project adequately so that delivery of the minimum useable subset of IT Enablers accounts for no more than 60% of the available resources

You can read the full good practice guide at: http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/publications/benefits.aspx

You can find out more about UCISA at: http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/en.aspx

Mark Ritchie IS Applications