INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES
Project Definition
Project Identification
Project Name:
PSS #:
Phase:
Initiation
Date:
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Project Sponsor:
Version:
1.0
Project Manager:
Overview / Purpose
Briefly describe why Loyola is undertaking this project? Describe the business reasons for the project and /
or the business issues that this project is planning to address.
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Primary Stakeholders
Lists the individuals, groups or departments that will be impacted (in some way) by this project.
Stakeholder
Involvement / Impact
Scope
List the major project activities. Also include activities that are out of scope (i.e. activities that will not be
included in the project.)
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Out of Scope:
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Project Definition
Deliverables
List the products of the project. Include both project management and product deliverables.
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Critical Success Criteria
List the outcomes that must be achieved in order for this project to be considered a success for the
business. After the project has been completed, what factors will be considered to determine if the project
objectives have been met.
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Assumptions
Describe facts, details and, agreements that are part of the basis of the planning for this project. Identify the
known factors that will lead to the project’s success. .
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Constraints / Risks
List the known factors that may impact the successful completion of the project. Identify the potential issues
that will need to be managed in order to mitigate their impact to the project’s success.
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Project Definition
Preliminary Labor and Cost Estimates
List any specific project related expenses / expenditures
Cost Type
Labor (In House)
Please specify if labor costs will be managed internally
Please specify if consultants will be used, their hourly rate and anticipated expense to
the project.
Material (including software and licenses)
Please specify any project related expenditures for hardware or software.
Amount
$0
$0
Consulting Fees (Out of House)
Please specify any additional fees related to consultants.
Total
Anticipated future Operational Expenses
Please specify future project related expenditures for future maintenance, etc.
Preliminary Milestones
Note: These Milestones are estimates only and are subject to revision as business, functional, and technical
requirements are more completely defined in the planning stage.
Est. Completion
Phase
Milestone
(mm/yy)
Initiation
Planning
Execution
Close-out
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Project Definition
Project Team Members - Roles and Responsibilities
List the needed project team members with their roles and primary responsibilities. When necessary, adjust
roles and responsibilities as needed for the project. Refer to Project Roles and Responsibilities Document
for additional information.
Name / Title
Role
Primary Responsibilities
Has a vested interest in the successful outcome of the
project. Secures funding and overall approval on project.
Vocal and visible champion for the project throughout
the University. Confirms that the project’s goals and
objectives are met to ensure that the project obtains the
intended business objectives. Keep abreast of major
Executive Sponsor
project activities. Ultimate decision maker for issues that
/ Business Owner
impact the business. Provides final approval for all major
scope changes. Provides project direction and setting
priorities when competing objectives exist overall in
project. Provide approval to proceed to each succeeding
project phase. Approves the Project Schedule. Provides
regular feedback to the project team on performance
versus expectations.
Has vested interest in the completion of the project and
Executive
how the project will impact their specific area. Provides
Stakeholder
information, as needed, to insure that the project stays
on track and meets the intended goals and deliverables.
Provides subject matter expertise for department
functions. Accurately and effectively represents the
business needs of their department and the interrelationships between departments. Provides guidance
and insight for the Project’s roll-out within their areas of
Functional Lead
responsibility. Makes project decisions on behalf of their
respective departments. Obtains consensus within their
department for broad business impactful decisions.
Keeps key departmental sponsors and stakeholders
abreast of major project activities. Provides and shares
feedback on deliverables. Provides testing support.
University-wide subject matter expert. Provide guidance
and insight for the Project’s roll-out. Provide subject
Enterprise SME
matter expertise for various departmental functions and
the inter-relationships between departments.
Vocal and visible champion for the project throughout
ITS and the University along with Business Sponsor.
Keeps abreast of major project activities and provides
additional information requested by the Business
ITS Sponsor
Sponsor. When necessary, addresses issues with
project priorities and resource constraints as escalated
by the Product Owner or Project Manager. Final
escalation point for all ITS issues.
Oversight for the product’s seam-less hardware and
software integration within the Loyola architecture.
ITS Product Owner Owner of all application integration design. Identifies
needed technical resources. Escalation point for
technical issues. Owner of vendor management and
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Project Definition
Project Team Members - Roles and Responsibilities
List the needed project team members with their roles and primary responsibilities. When necessary, adjust
roles and responsibilities as needed for the project. Refer to Project Roles and Responsibilities Document
for additional information.
Name / Title
Role
Primary Responsibilities
relationships for product support. Responsible for
product versioning and upgrade decisions. Decision
maker for product configuration and infrastructure
design.
Responsible for ensuring that the project team
completes the project within time, scope and budget.
Has ownership for all Project Management tasks and
activities. Responsible for development and
management of the overall project plan. Gathering
approval for deliverables from Project Sponsors.
Project Manager
Responsible for managing project risks. Responsible for
communication to stakeholders. Responsible for ongoing
status reporting, including project health. Responsible for
overall management of the vendor relationships.
Responsible for addressing issues with resource
constraints. Responsible for identifying need for
escalation of issues.
Analyzes and develops an understanding of the current
state processes to ensure that the context and
implications of change are understood by the
department and the project team. Develops an
understanding of how present and future business needs
will impact the solution. Identifies the sources of
requirements and understands how roles help determine
Business Analyst
the relative validity of requirements. Develops a
Requirements Management Plan and shares with the
Project Team and all stakeholders. Identifies and
documents all business, technical, product and process
requirements. Works with the department to prioritize the
requirements. Helps to define acceptance criteria for
completion of the solution.
Provides assistance and support for developing and
ITS Security Team
implementing the appropriate and required security
environment.
Project Definition Approval
By signing below, the identified individuals approve this Project Definition Document and agree to provide
project team members as identified in the “Project Team Members” section.
Name, Title
Signature
Date
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Project Definition
Project Definition (Instructions)
The purpose of the Project Definition document is to clearly and accurately define all project attributes from the
beginning in an effort to ensure the project’s success. This is a consolidated source of information about the project
that identifies the key components of the project, including scope, deliverables, critical success criteria, assumptions,
risks and constraints, costs, milestones, and roles. Utilizing Loyola’s “best fit” approach to Project Management, not
every section of the Project Definition may need to be filled-out for every project. Additional components may be
used by the Project Manager as they are deemed necessary and required by their project. The key “components” of
each Project Definition section are outlined below:
Project Identification:
The Project Identification section identifies preliminary project information including Project Name, PSS #, Sponsor’s
name and title, and Project Manager’s name.
Overview / Purpose:
This section describes the business purpose or need for implementing the project. This section should consist of the
business reasons for the project and / or the business issues that the project will address. A description of what the
project is planning to achieve should also be included. And, if available, the “business value” for doing the project
should be included. The source of this information is typically the Project Sponsor and / or the Primary Stakeholders,
Primary Stakeholders:
Stakeholders are persons or groups who are actively involved in the project or whose interest may be positively or
negatively affected by the performance or completion of the project. Stakeholders may exert influence over the
project, its deliverables, and the project team members. For each project, both internal and external stakeholders
must be identified in order to determine the project requirements and expectations of all involved groups. Stakeholder
identification is a continuous process and can be difficult to finalize. Identifying stakeholders and understanding their
relative degree of influence on a project is critical.
Scope:
Project scope is focused on what needs to be accomplished to complete the project and deliver the product, service
or result with specified features and functions. The project’s scope can be identified thru discussions with the Project’s
Sponsor and key Stakeholders. Managing the project’s scope is one of the fundamental responsibilities of a project
manager. It is important for the Project Manager and Team to understand the Project’s Scope in order to be able to
recognize scope creep as it occurs. As important as identifying what will be included in the project is to clearly
identify what will not be part of the project (i.e. out of scope).
Deliverables:
A deliverable can be an outcome to be achieved or a product to be provided. It becomes a set of specified outputs for
each project milestone. A deliverable is a tangible or intangible object produced as a result of the project that is
intended to be delivered to a customer. A deliverable could be a report, a document, a server upgrade or any other
building block of an overall project. A deliverable may be composed of multiple smaller deliverables. It may be either
an outcome to be achieved or a product to be provided. A deliverable differs from a project milestone in that a
milestone is a measurement of progress toward an outcome whereas the deliverable is the result of the process. For
a typical project, a milestone might be the completion of a product design while the deliverable might be the technical
diagram of the product. In technical projects, deliverables can further be classified as hardware, software, or design
documents.
Critical Success Criteria:
These factors are important to those who will benefit from the project and those who are responsible for determining
the success criteria. Critical Success Factors are the essential activity that must be completed well if you are to
achieve the mission, objectives or goals of your project. By identifying your Critical Success Factors, you can create
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Project Definition
a common point of reference to help you direct and measure the success of your project. As a common point of
reference, CSFs help everyone on the team know exactly what's most important to the customer.
Assumptions:
Assumptions are factors that, for planning purposes, are considered to be true, real, or certain. Each assumption is
an "educated guess", a likely condition, circumstance or event, presumed known in the absence of absolute certainty.
Once identified, assumptions should be evaluated from a long term perspective, according to confidence level (i.e.
How confident are you that this assumption will be proven correct?), followed by a related "if-then" risk counterpart
analysis (i.e. If this assumption is proven incorrect, what will be the likely consequences for the project?).
Constraints / Risks:
Constraints are applicable restrictions that will affect the performance of the project. A constraint can be any factor
that affects when an activity can be scheduled. The primary impact of project constraints is the likelihood of delaying
the completion of the project. There are three types of project constraints: technological, resource and physical. The
technological constraints relate to the sequence in which individual project activities must be completed. For example,
in constructing a house, pouring the foundation must occur before building the frame. Resource constraints relate to
the lack of adequate resources which may force parallel activities to be performed in sequence. Project risks can be
further aligned with the specific project triple-constraint variable that they may impact if not addressed: schedule,
budget and quality. The Team needs to identify the potential issues / risks that will need to be managed in order to
mitigate their impact to the project’s success.
Preliminary Labor and Cost Estimates:
If the project, has a specific budget assigned, at a high-level, please include the currently identified costs. If not
budget has been defined, yet some expenses are known, please include those anticipated expenses as well. For inhouse projects with no project related expenses, put zero ($0) in the amount column next to the respective cost type.
Equally important is to identify any anticipated costs associated with post-implementation maintenance or support of
the deliverables.
Preliminary Milestones:
The milestones are only estimates and can be revised during any phase of the implementation. A milestone is a
measurement of progress toward an outcome, whereas the deliverable is the result of the process. For a typical
project, a milestone might be the completion of a product design while the deliverable might be the technical diagram
of the product.
Project Team Members – Roles & Responsibilities:
In this section we identify the resources needed to complete the project. This is only a preliminary list. Resource
roles and responsibilities may change as additional planning is completed and the project moves to completion.
Along with identifying the individual for a specific role, it is essential that responsibilities are clearly outlined to avoid
future confusion. When necessary, adjust roles and responsibilities as needed for each project. Clearly, all the listed
roles are not required by every project. The PM, with input from the Sponsor, should identify what Roles are needed
for the project.
Project Definition Approval:
Gather formal, or informal (email), approval for the Project Definition document from the person(s) who owns the
project, Business Owner or Executive Sponsor. Their approval confirms that they are in agreement with the content
stated in this Project Definition document. Gathering their feedback is essential to make sure that everyone has a
basic understanding of the project; what will, and will not include.
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