Establishing Governance for Project and Service Management

Abstract

Recently, the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries began to implement a new strategic plan, which greatly increased the number, complexity, and scope of new projects and services sponsored by the Libraries. Historically, initiation, planning, and management of projects and services within Libraries lacked both codified processes and uniform management tools. Libraries’ leadership quickly realized that the rapid increase in the size of the unit's project and service footprints had rendered such an unstructured approach to project and service management untenable. In response to leadership's concerns, the Libraries’ Digital Strategy team launched an effort to establish a structure of governance around project and service management within the University Libraries. This paper will review the selection process for new project and service portfolio management tools, as well as the effort to define project initiation and management and service transition guidelines, with the intent of providing a framework for establishing project and service management governance in similar organizations.