Analysis to complete High Level Scope (HLS) phase

Owned by Paul Seiler (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 13, 2015
3 min read

This page seeks to document the analysis tasks and associated outputs remaining in the HLS phase. Once all these tasks are completed the project team and the PMO should have sufficient understanding/certainty to:

  • Propose an order of work: Time boxed phases of activity, logically sequenced to deliver the whole scope in a given time frame.
  • Start the agile development: As in the cycle of story writing, solution design, development of content and technology, testing, and deployment that are the hallmarks of an agile approach

 

The following analysis tasks and their associated outputs are proposed:

  • Across the full breadth/scope of the six HLS documents:
    • Resolve a high level scope tension: The full scope of the six HLS documents is considerably larger than the scope of WIP II as stated in the Business Justification Case (BJC). Do we want to go with the smaller, the larger or somewhere in between? Once this question is answered one document (set) needs updating. This decision might also influence whether the success indicator work should be across the full breadth or for each HLS area.
    • Draft an elevator pitch: A persuasive description of of the project's purpose and scope that can be shared in 30 seconds and will elicit a "That sounds interesting, please tell me more" response.
    • Map the dependencies: So we can make an informed decision on where to start.
    • Make high level IA decisions: To reduce the probability that significant rework of content will be required high level IA decisions should be made before the detailed content planning and writing begins. I expect that this is a web team decision, with input from PMO and maybe even higher. The following issues have already been identified and require decisions:
      • Postgraduate: Will postgraduates be an audience at the top level of the banner, alongside future students and current students?
      • Research: Will the Research zone be the home for the large number of research sites, institutes and chairs?
      • Learning and Teaching: Does not seem an audience or client group. How could this be best reshaped, moved or demoted? 
      • Others: ???
  • For each of the six HSL documents:
    • Socialise with wider web team: Both the full scope of all six documents (like the overview given to the project team last Friday) (so that they can identify gaps, irregularities and inconsistencies) and (to the extent that time allows) workshop the specific content (scope, approach, assumptions, dependencies, etc) and to answer as many of the open questions as is possible.
    • Hunt down answers to open question: The open questions are substantive enough to expect that they be answered before locking down the scope. Other questions that one could reasonably expect would be answered during the analysis cycles of an agile project are located in the most recent MS Word versionQuestions that arerefelct Most of the open questions For open questions, we recognise that some will only be answered while doing the work. However, those where greater value is realised if answered earlier are those that impact on the PMO decision (i.e. scope, priorities, assumptions and dependencies).
    • Identify success indicators: There does not seem to be any measures of success, so lets propose some, both in output language (e.g. reduce the number of pages by X") and outcome oriented (X% reduction in the number of "where is info on Z?"). We can also gather these in the initial stakeholder conversations.
    • Stakeholder analysis: Identify the key stakeholders for each domain (a starting list), with suggestions for the "product owner", and an initial conversation with a small number of stakeholders from each area (i.e. make the introductions, present our role, listen to their expectations, identify any thorny issues, etc).
    • Draft initial epic - story breakdown: Valuable to test our understanding of the scope, to allow initial estimation and to know what goes in the early sprints. But it will change as soon as we start 

 

If more detailed analysis must begin earlier (i.e. to keep project resources fully occupied) then I propose that it is in the areas of Programmes of Study and Faculties and Schools. Not only are these the two highest priorities from our sponsor / the PMO but they probably the heart of the BJC and inter-related.

 

Questions to answer/resolve:

 

  1. Boundaries and constraints: How can we make the best use of external data sources? Understand the technology constraints.
  2. How many hands on the pump?: Can we agree the priority on other projects/blocks of bau work (e.g. Squiz upgrade, Learning Success) that overlap WIP significantly, either giving us an external (to the project) dependency (e.g. CIP) or an in-scope assumption.