Project Tools: JUSTIS – A Program Management Example
In the “Tightening Budgets Put Emphasis on the PMO” post, we asked for examples of how others are using tools and techniques to manage their portfolios of projects. We’ve received several email requests to put up an example from our own work, and thought that we would share some information on one of our projects to illustrate one approach and invite discussion. Please feel free to ask questions, or comment in any way.Our Project Example: The JUSTIS Program
IT Project Methods, Inc. has been program consultant for the last five years on the JUSTIS program of criminal justice projects.
JUSTIS is a portfolio of related and inter-dependent projects whose primary goal is to retire an outdated criminal justice mainframe information system, while leveraging the already considerable investments of member agencies in individual client/server case management applications.
Designed as a “Federated” enterprise system, JUSTIS allows each agency to retain local administration and control of its application and database, but with the infrastructure physically located in a central secure data center providing reduced support costs and improved maintenance and physical security. By using Oracle SOA components to connect and integrate line-of-business systems, the task of adding new systems and new services is simplified. Integration of these previously stand alone automation applications will facilitate one time entry of data for improved workflow and greatly improve capability to respond more rapidly to requests for information.
The JUSTIS program consists of the following individual projects:
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JUSTIS Infrastructure and Server projects
- Server Consolidation Project
- Sheriff’s Department Jail Management System and Records Management System
- Sheriff’s Department In-Custody and Post-Release Programs Case Management
- Sheriff’s Department CLETS Connection
- District Attorney’s Case Management System
- Public Defender’s Case Management System
- Adult Probation Department’s Case Management System
- Courts’ collection of victim restitution, fines and fees
- Police Department’s Records Management System
- Juvenile Probation Case Management System
- Courts Case Management System (information sharing only)
- Department on the Status of Women Portal Project
- Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice Portal Project
- JUSTIS Hub (ORACLETM SOA components)
- Core functions (BPELTM)
- Information exchange between Case Management Systems and Mainframe
- Analytics and Reports Portals
- Data Warehouse
- Mainframe Criminal Justice System Retirement Project
- Department of Emergency Management (911) RMS interface (information sharing only)
Our tool is INNOTASTM
As part of our work with San Francisco JUSTIS’ management to enforce an overall IT governance structure and provide a central Project Management Office (PMO) function, we chose INNOTASTM, a San Francisco-based provider of a new Software As A Service (SAAS) application for Project Portfolio Management. This turned out to be the most reasonably priced offering that was also highly placed in the Gartner “Magic Quadrant” for PMO applications.
With INNOTAS’ flexible views stakeholders can easily look at program or project information from any web browser by department or cost center, and create reports and dashboards for status updates to stakeholders. INNOTAS also supports individual time and expense reporting, as well as project resource (asset) tracking. Reports can be easily exported to Excel for further manipulation. The instance also provides the online central document repository for the Program, allowing any authorized member to view, retrieve, print or email any document or other artifact to which they have access.
With the addition of their “Portfolios” functionality in June of 2007, INNOTAS’ flexibility and power were greatly enhanced. With this new feature, we are now able to “slice and dice” cost, scope and schedule data using virtually “infinite” hierarchies of groupings.
If you’d like to know more we would be pleased to share what we know so far with you.
So, that’s our approach for this Program. How are you managing your portfolios or programs, and what tools have you found to be most effective? We look forward to hearing from you.
