Communication Collaboration and Control

Les Timms

Head of IT for the Development Directorate

Birmingham City Council

About BCC and the Development Directorate

•Birmingham City Council is the largest city council in Europe.

•The Development Directorate represents one of the City’s 5 strategic directorates.

•Over the last 5 years the Directorate has been responsible for the transformation of the City Centre.

•Major projects include:

-The new Bull Ring

-Millennium Point – The Think Tank

•Typical initiatives:

-Implementing Electronic Government

-Flourishing Neighbourhoods

Development Directorate IT Environment

•1800 desktops linked into the City WAN

• Up to 50 IT –related projects at any one time:

•IT programmes/projects include:

- Supporting Highways PFI

- Highways Database

- Street Lighting System

- Planning Online

- Planning Portal

- PARSOL

- Document Management

High-Level issues

•Managing many projects involving different service areas

•Control of programmes/projects, status reporting and visibility of latest action

•Managing associated documents and attachments

•Reporting against Directorate targets and key initiatives such as IEG and Best Value

The Challenge for Programme/Project Management;

• Many active projects that involve different service areas

• Capturing ideas and knowledge across a wide range of projects

• Need to know who is doing what at any time and be able to dynamically re-schedule

• Enabling mechanisms for reporting and tracking project completion deadlines

• Microsoft Project helps many Project Managers build a list of tasks, but once the project commenced, activity reporting was done through voice and e-mail

• Compiling a list of projects and reporting was major problem for Programme Manager

• Two IT teams recently combined – with different practices and cultures

The Solution

• PS-Team implemented - initially to track all IT projects and activities in the Development Directorate

• Provides a foundation for initiating new projects and assigning them to specific manager - basis for the onward creation of tasks for team members

• Manages processes for identifying and allocating expenditure

• Supports compilation of accurate reports to the Directorate's management teams

• As with any system it requires thought and planning to get the most out of it.

Benefits

• Helps the manager to manage his/her projects

• Not tied to any methodology, but supports PRINCE2 and MSP.

• Continuous visibility of actions – full audit trail

• Allows precise tracking of progress on each project

• Allocate and monitor individual responsibilities

• Significantly improves project control

• Visibility and reporting against Directorate targets and initiatives

• Provides a single point for all project files and documentation

Technical overview

• Zero client-side software or applets

• Based on XML & Web Services

• Entirely Web server based

• Microsoft SQL Server database

• Built using the Microsoft .NET Framework

Technical benefits

• Low maintenance overhead

• Common and compatible data format

• Integrates with email and Microsoft Project

• Simple deployment

• Accessible and usable through RAS and GPRS

Implementation Plan Outline

Expansion of Functionality Branch

Project Type Topics

Eastside

Highways

Transportation Strategy

Economic Dev

Urban Design

Best Value

IEG (Implementing Electronic Government)

Planning

Infrastructure Consolidation

Topic Groups

Development Directorate

Eastside

Economic Dev

Highways

Transportation Strategy

Urban Design

Planning

Development Directorate Project Tasks

Corporate

Best Value

IEG

Other

Infrastructure Consolidation

Corporate Project Tasks

Matrix Management

One key benefit PS-Team offers is matrix management of the data.

View work by resource

View work by project or programme

View work by ‘service area’….