PORTFOLIO TRACKING
AND RECORD KEEPING
UPDATE
This Business Case seeks to replace the current IT Capital PMO MS
Access database which is used to tie together/maintain a businessrelevant link to the two Commonwealth financial transaction databases
and enable the PMO to produce executive level dashboards.
IT Capital Portfolio
Business Case
Executive Summary
The Capital Portfolio Management Office is looking to replace an MS Access database, which it uses to tie two
other transactional financial database together, and to create more significant and relevant executive level
project dashboards.
This access database is used to maintain the business information and situational awareness of the
Commonwealth capital Portfolio. . Data from this database and from project interactions is needed to create
project dashboards for Project Manager and Business Owners
The access database has become too manual and because of a need to stand up a system by July 1st 2014
which also offers the Capital PMO to do analytics within the database using Jasper, and/or Tableau or extracts
which must be saved for historical reasons.
Information Technology Division has in-house Clarity running on MS SQL Server and the Capital PMO would
like to quickly leverage the current Clarity install to fulfil its base minimum function and “The As-IS” which does
not rely on the Database administrator being present for reports to be run., while ITD looks to the future of
Clarity.
Because of the short timeframe, the Capital PMO is willing to use many of the base configurations to both
speed up time and lower cost to meet its deadline.
Business Overview
The Capital PMO is responsible for maintaining and executing Capital Projects across the Commonwealth
portfolio. . This means it has to know the Business of the Secretariats, and be able to trace Programs and
projects to these entities. . Within this framework it does this –at a minimum – by keeping track of budgets,
actuals, modification to budget and spending transactions. It does not own this information; nor does it want
to – the Commonwealth has invested heavily in these systems, and the Capital PMO would like to leverage
their extracts. Transactional Accounting information comes from the systems of the Office of the comptroller,
and Portfolio and Project accounting information comes from the Executive Office for Administration and
Finance. The transactional information from these systems can be received by extract and nightly runs. There
are also a “live” delayed feeds which can be accessed remotely for these systems through the Commonwealth
Information Warehouse.
Business Need
As-is
The Capital PMO maintains a database which ties these systems together with additional analysis and business
work product so it may do its mission. This access database serves as the primary hub of information for the
entire business. However, the access database was never intended to become this hub and so is now the
bottleneck when the database owner is absent or on holiday. . Reports cannot be run, old information must be
used and updated information must wait to be placed into the queue. Furthermore, any new need, view or
summary information cannot be accessed for analytics until the system owner is present to explain the tables’
structure.
Current System of Records.
The current system is an Access Database: There is a description of tables and connections to the various
transactional databases which it absorbs. Those links and what tables need to be accessed are defined.
Queries and forms produce flat excel file with simple variance calculators.
Minimum Qualifications of a System for July 1st delivery
The Capital PMO must be able to fulfill the following information and performance requirements:
1. Determine who has access to Capital PMO data and set the required levels of access, including:
a. Project Manager
b. Business Oversight
c. Capital PM
d. All access
2. Access names of projects, subprojects, monetary amounts, and have active variance tracking at a
moment’s notice in near real time (or push button real time). Information not in the information
warehouses will be keyed into clarity or uploaded from structured files. It is expected that for the July
release only Capital PMO will be required to be able to view this information.
3. Track actuals vs spending and calculate on-the-fly trending and monetary burn rate, and, if the Capital
PMO has a formula, use that instead of the tools.
4. Allow any user to pull up a project by name, code or year, search for transactions, see current burn
rate, and update projected burn rate based on new information.
5. Support at least ODBC access, allow extracts to various document forms, and have means for a BI
platform (Jasper and Tableau are in-house at the Commonwealth) to use its information. .
6. Allow the Capital PMO/assigned users the flexibility to create ad hoc tables, create forms, input data
to forms and export data to forms.
7. Allow the Capital PMO/assigned users to display financial information in Balance sheet, Income
Statement and Direct and Indirect Cash flow statements – or have the capacity to create and edit
those and other dashboards /screens.
8. Support close-to-real-time display and reporting on transaction actuals from the CIW, display this
information with the estimated budgets, allow changes to estimates, and be able to track variances
9. Report information in the current form the Capital PMO uses (examples can be provided). The Capital
PMO is flexible in changing its business process to meet current requirements
10. Keep historical information for daily, quarterly, even yearly analysis.
11. Allow the creation of Dashboards based on information and formulas created by the Capital PMO.
These Dashboards are currently in Excel. Dashboards must be exportable to editable excel and PDF.
Limitations
The system shall not at this time push information to either existing system.
Future Requirements
Looking to the future, , the Capital PMO’s main activity is Value Governance (see Appendix I), which it will use
to advise on Strategy, Vendor and Performance Management, and to manage Risk. As the Capital Portfolio
grows, the solution must grow with it, allowing the Capital PMO visibility from the portfolio level, and the
ability to do analysis at the transaction level.
The Capital PMO also would like executives, Business Sponsors and PMs to pull up similar information and also
add information as needed to these as above. . These sponsors can have different views and can drill down
into information as they see fit.
The Capital PMO would like to start workflow process and planning to reduce the growth of emailed files
(Excel, PDF’s, et al.)
The capabilities below are not part of the July 1 deployment but will weigh heavily in decisions
about system build-out:
1. Run (defined) standard or newly created heuristic inquiries to allow the Capital PMO to determine the
maximum and minimum paid for a transaction over a specified number of years, and then using the
system or BI plot a histogram to find outliers which it can use to take action. Such action could include
after discussing with the transaction owner, an update to contracting to achieve the same significant
gains.
2. Allow the Capital PMO to compile Six Sigma calculations, create a Quality Function Deployment chart
or other control chart. Input its own Alpha and Beta risk calculations and weights to determine a
currently unspecified business metric. If not, allow the PMO to extract any information it needs to do
the same in another system.
3. Add the ability to update, and maintain project information online, be able to capture email and
webforms directly to the tool, and to publish information to a website and also take extracts to be
used in reports and presentations. These reports must have the option to live with the system.
Major Solicitation Questions
The Capital PMO is using Agile in software development and will be required. Responses will also be rated per
the below.
Would the Responder:
4. Commit to using an Agile methodology?
5. Commit to no change orders but instead commitment to system delivery which fulfills the minimum
business need – this includes a commitment on the part of the Commonwealth product owner to
commit to the weekly sprint To-Do?
6. Commit to a cost per sprint?
Other Agile questions:
7. How many Agile teams do you believe are required to do this project?
8. How big do they believe these teams should be?
9. What do they believe is the average number of sprints for a defined project of this size
Other Commonwealth Questions:
10. What is your knowledge of the Commonwealth’s business model?
11. Have you worked with the Commonwealth before on a major product release?
12. What is your team’s expertise working with defined business models and major product releases
outside of the Commonwealth?
13. What are the major and significant best practices for success that you can define?
Project Benefits
The Benefits to the Commonwealth are expansive but mostly indirect. Currently there is no single active place
to do analytics of the Commonwealth portfolio, and it is very difficult to retrieve simple project information
without access to several excel sheets.
This particular task would greatly increase the value of the Capital PMO as well as its ability to actively oversee
project financials.
Direct Benefits:
-
Time Saved - 2 hours per month per employee (resulting in a 120 hours a year) would be saved in
retrieving documents for financial information
Interface Improvements – with other Commonwealth assets
Process Improvements.
o Allow real time access to common information
o Reduce the paperwork of PM’s
o Increase Transparency
o Reduce the risk of loss of information or inability to retrieve information.
Appendix I – The Information Technology Capital Portfolio
Management Office
The IT Capital PMO is responsible for:
Managing the Commonwealth's IT Capital Portfolio to achieve a positive return on Investment and Public Value
by funding projects across state government that develop and implement technology infused solutions: to
meet Commonwealth needs (Direct Public Value); upgrade mission-critical systems (Indirect Public Value);
promote systems that can be shared by multiple agencies and provide shared infrastructure and services
(Indirect and Environmental Value) using Public Value Governance:
Public Value Governance



A. Investment Management - Ensuring effective and efficient use of Commonwealth IT project funds
Ensure the Commonwealth’s Capital enabled investments contribute to optimal value over the life of
the project (ex, Expressing business; Detailing financial, non-financial(including operational) benefits)
that significantly improve the customer experience and customer/stakeholder satisfaction B. Value Governance & Management - Raise the level of project management discipline in value
delivery by maintaining PMO Situational awareness by IT techniques while keeping an eye on long
term technology trends to addresses assumptions, costs, risks and outcomes related to a balanced
portfolio of IT
C. Strategic Portfolio Management - Providing project oversight services consisting of Portfolio Analysis
and Portfolio governance, and using the insights gained from portfolio analysis and proactively
integrate them into the governance decision making process of an Organization to enable the
Commonwealth to achieve benefits across the full lifecycle of a project.
Strategy Implementation Framework



A. - Ensuring effective and efficient use of Commonwealth IT project funds by investing in priority
projects with greatest benefit to the public; maximizing use of available funds and ensuring
accountability for project expenditures
B. - Raise the level of project management discipline and maturity at the Commonwealth by developing
and deploying effective and scalable project management and governance tools based on repeatable
project management standards and best practices across all projects
C. - Providing project oversight services to help capital projects stay on-track and achieve business and
technical needs.