Document Type

Project

Publication Date

Spring 2013

Instructor

Dundar F. Kocaoglu

Course Title

Project Management

Course Number

ETM 545

Subjects

System analysis, Portland State University. Office of Information Technology -- Management, Operations research

Abstract

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) at Portland State University (PSU) migrated its website to a centrally provided Drupal content management system in the summer of 2012, leaving out a significant amount of content from the previous website in exchange for a quick implementation timeline based on an executive order to unify departmental branding across the division of Finance and Administration. This initial migration focused on public facing information and excluded large swaths of support articles that were broadly used by faculty, staff, students, and technology professionals. In early 2013, a new project was launched to reevaluate the design decisions made in the initial migration project, republish or rewrite the missing articles, and to consolidate the divergent web presence of the seven major departments within OIT. This paper does a comparison by juxtaposing these web projects through their various incarnations. First was a longrunning, never completed project with no clear stakeholders, scope, or control mechanisms–simply an internal desire to fix what was broken and modernize the delivery platform. Second, a top-down requirement was imposed to complete what had been in process: move to the new Drupal delivery platform and do it soon. No specific delivery date was given, but a executive decree was put forth and the OIT leadership was going to comply. Lastly, a true project team was formed, appropriate resources were allocated, and OIT executive leadership provided both the charge and support, allowing flexibility in requirements and project scope as deemed appropriate by the project team. The core elements of resource allocation and management, clear and inclusive communication techniques, and schedule management are key elements in the success of this latest iteration of the project and from all signs, a successful product launch.

Rights

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Comments

Portland State University Library received permission to post the report from one of the authors. If you are an author of the report and would like it to be restricted, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/21913

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