[Introduction to the Template

Description: The Project Structure document defines the approach the team will take in organizing and managing the project. It is the strategic representation of initial decisions made regarding goals, work scope, team requirements, team processes, and risk. 

Justification: The Project Structure baseline is created during the envisioning phase and is utilized and revised throughout the remaining phases, serving as an essential reference for the project team on how they will work together successfully.

Team Role Primary: The Program Management role is responsible for facilitating the creation of the document with input from all other core team members.]

Project Approaches

[The Project Approaches section defines how the team will manage and support the project. These sub-sections provide descriptions of project scope, approaches, and project processes.]

Project Goals, Objectives, Assumptions, and Constraints

[Description: The Project Goals, Objectives, Assumptions, and Constraints section describe the project environment:

·         Goals (the project’s final purpose or aim)

·         Objectives (the goals broken into measurable components)

·         Assumptions (factors considered true, real, or certain, and that await validation)

·         Constraints (a non-functional requirement that will limit the project team’s options).

Project Goals and Objectives are initially derived from the business goals and objectives that are developed during the opportunity phase and confirmed during the envisioning phase. Assumptions and Constraints may be derived from strategic Microsoft services (Rapid Portfolio Alignment, Rapid Economic Justification) and research regarding the customer’s environment.

Justification: Project Goals and Objectives articulate the customer’s and team’s expectations of the project and can be converted into performance measurements. Project Assumptions attempt to create explicit information from implicit issues and to point out where factual data is unavailable. Project Constraints place limits on the creation of boundaries and decision-making.]

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Project Scope

[Description: The Project Scope section defines the tasks, deliverables, resources, and schedule necessary to deliver the customer’s solution. The tasks are expressed in the Master Project Approach, the Milestone Approach, the Project Estimates, and the Project Schedule. These multiple views allow the customer and project team to look at the project from different perspectives and to analyze how the work is organized.

Justification: The tasks, deliverables, resources, and schedule exist at a high level of detail. These Project Scope statements provide the context for more detailed planning during follow-on project phases.]

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Project Trade-off Matrix

[Description: The Project Trade-off Matrix is a table that represents the customer’s preferences in setting priorities among schedule, resources and features.

Note: when using the graphic, move the check marks to the appropriate boxes and fill in the _____(blanks) within the sentence.

Justification: The Trade-off Matrix sets the default standard of priorities and provides guidance for making trade-offs throughout the project. These trade-offs should be established up front and then reassessed throughout the project’s life.]

Master Project Approach

[Description: The Master Project Approach is the roll-up of all the project teams’ approaches. This includes an overall statement of strategy for the project and individual strategy statements for each team. A strategy statement describes a general approach to accomplish work without associated metrics.

The Master Project Approach also describes how the various project teams will collaborate to build and deploy the customer solution. This creates an awareness of the dependencies among the teams.

This section should also include a description of the high-level work tasks to be undertaken by each team. The work can be described in part by identifying what its result or deliverable will be. This description can also include things such as tools, methodologies, best practices, sequences of events, etc.

Justification: The Master Project Approach ensures that each team understands how it will contribute to the project’s overall success. In addition, it communicates to the customer that Microsoft and its partners are working from a well-developed strategy. The Master Project Approach evolves into the Master Project Plan during the planning phase.]

The sections below describe the project team’s approach to building the project work packages.

[Note: The sections identified below are suggested categories. Modify these categories to fit your project. ]

Development Approach

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Test Approach

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Training Approach

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User Support Approach

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Communication Approach

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Deployment Approach

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Operations Approach

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Milestone Approach

[Description: The Milestone Approach identifies the significant events in the project’s lifespan. During envisioning, these are usually expressed as External Milestones that identify visible accomplishments of high-level deliverables and illustrate the project’s schedule targets. At the highest level, External Milestones can be associated with the completion of a specific project phase.

The Milestone Approach identifies the basis for establishing milestones. Depending on the nature of the project, Milestones can be finance-based, progress-based, product-based, and so on. The Milestone Approach defines this basis and identifies the milestone events that will be tracked. 

Justification: Describing Milestones early in the project establishes high-level time targets the customer can confirm and the team must anticipate during its planning activities. It also identifies the checkpoints where Milestone Reviews will occur to assess the project’s quality and its results.]

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Project Estimates

[Description: The Project Estimates section contains an estimate of the resources and costs required for the project teams to accomplish their work. Resources include people, equipment, facilities, and material. Costs are calculated by applying rates to each type of resource requirement. This section should contain the following information, broken out by each functional team:

·         A list of resource types

·         The amount of the resource required

·         The rate applied to each resource

·         The cost of each resource

·         Total cost of resources for each functional team

This section should also contain the cost for all resources summed together.

Justification: Project Estimates provide information for calculating the budget estimate. They also enable the project manager and team leads to identify the specific resources needed to perform the work.]

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Schedule Summary

[Description: The Schedule Summary section identifies and compiles the collective work tasks and their calendar dates into a complete project schedule that identifies its beginning and end dates. Each major Project Milestone is identified and assigned a targeted completion date. The schedule is a consolidated schedule — it includes the work and dates of all project teams.

The scheduling process is iterative. During the envisioning phase, the project’s Major Milestones anchor the schedule. During the planning phase, the schedule will become more granular as the work tasks are broken down.

Justification: The Schedule provides the basis for the customer to verify timelines and for the project team to produce a constrained master plan from which it can validate proposed budgets, resources, and timescales.]

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Roles and Responsibilities

[Description: The Roles and Responsibilities section defines how people will be organized in the project. The assurance of quality resources and structure begins with creating people “requirements” and follows with organizing those people into teams and allocating responsibility. Clear statements of skill requirements and roles and responsibilities enable the project manager to select the right people and communicate to them how they will contribute to the project’s success.]

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

[Description: The Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities section specifies the requirements for project participants. This is expressed by defining the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to conduct the project. These requirements should include technical, managerial, and support capabilities. This information is organized into functional teams and responsibilities. At the highest level, the KSA can be based on the standard MSF roles. Each functional team, or MSF role, is listed, and the team’s knowledge, skills, and abilities requirements are defined alongside.

Justification: Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities information will facilitate the careful selection of specific project participants and provide the basis for creating the core team structure.]

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Team Structure

[Description: The Team Structure section defines the project’s organizational entities (project manager, sponsor(s), steering committee, team leads, etc.), illustrates their relationships to one another, and defines levels of responsibility and reporting structure. When complete, the team structure assigns names to each organizational entity and explicitly calls out the individual team (or team members) tasked with executing, reviewing, and approving the project’s work. This assignment is spread across all entities participating in the project: Microsoft, Partners, and Customer.

Justification: The documentation of the project’s organizational structure ensures that all project participants understand their roles in making the project a success, clarifies lines of reporting and decision-making, and provides key stakeholders an opportunity to ensure that the project’s organizational structure (project form) will facilitate the work (project function).]

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Project Protocols

[Description: Project Protocols are the set of project processes that must be standardized to ensure all project participants are performing the processes in the same manner. This standardization creates performance efficiencies and facilitates a common language among the project stakeholders.]

Risk and Issue Management Approach

[Description: The Risk and Issue Management Approach section describes the processes, methods, and tools to be used to manage the project’s risks and issues. It must be sufficiently detailed to facilitate the risk and issue management process during the envisioning and planning phases. It must also make it possible to categorize issues as product issues or project issues. This section will include the following:

·         Description of risk and issue management processes, methods, and tools

·         Schedule/frequency of risk and issue management activities

·         Roles and responsibilities within the risk and issue management process

·         Specifications of the risk/issue assessment form and the issues resolution form

Justification: The Risk and Issue Management documentation ensures that all project participants understand their responsibilities in identifying and managing risks and issues, and that all project personnel are using the same risk and issue management processes.]

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Configuration Management Approach

[Description: The Configuration Management Approach section defines how all the project’s deliverables (hardware, software, management and technical documents, and work in progress) will be tracked, accounted for, and maintained. Configuration Management includes project documents, the development and test environments, and any impact on the production environment. This section will include the following:

·         Description of configuration management processes, methods, and tools

·         Processes to request configuration changes (steps, approval levels)

·         Roles and responsibilities for configuration management

·         Version-control standards for documents

Justification: Configuration Management documentation ensures that the project can maintain object and document integrity so that a single version is used at all times.]

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Change Management Approach

[Description: The Change Management Approach section describes how the project’s scope will be maintained through structured procedures for submitting, approving, implementing, and reviewing change requests. The change management process is charged with providing prompt and efficient handling of any request for change. This section should include the following:

·         Change management processes, methods, and tools

·         Composition of the Change Advisory Board

·         Change request form

·         Roles and responsibilities of change management activities

·         Reference to the contractual change order from the Customer Contracting Approach section

Justification: Documenting the Change Management Approach helps the project maintain a timely single perspective of the project’s scope (both project activities and products produced) and ensure that only contracted work is undertaken.]

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Release Management Approach

[Description: The Release Management Approach section describes the processes, methods, and tools that coordinate and manage releases of the solution to the different test and production environments. It describes the processes of coordinating and managing the activities by which all releases to the production IT environment are planned, tested, and implemented.

This section includes the transition plan (release to production) and plans for back-out processes. The approach should be compliant with the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Release Management Process.

Justification: This information ensures that the project plans for and follows an orderly process of solution test and implementation, thus limiting the impact on the customer’s operational environment and ensuring that environment is operationally ready to receive the release.]

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Project Quality Assurance Approach

[Description: The Project Quality Assurance Approach section defines how the project intends to deliver products that meet the customer’s quality expectations and Microsoft/Partner quality standards. It addresses both the project’s management and the development of the project’s product. This section should include the following:

·         Quality expectations

·         Process for assurance (audit, reviews, contractor controls)

·         Process for control (peer reviews, inspections, tests)

·         Quality organization (entities, roles, and responsibilities)

·         Templates for the Product Review, Project Milestone Review, and Customer Approval reports

·         Training requirements

Justification: A well-developed Product Quality Assurance Approach is key to managing customer confidence and ensuring the development and deployment of a golden solution.]

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Project Communication Approach

[Description: The Project Communication Approach section defines how and what the project will communicate with its stakeholders. This communication occurs within the team and between the team and external entities. The Project Communication Approach identifies the processes, methods, and tools required to ensure timely and appropriate collection, distribution, and management of project information for all project stakeholders. It also describes the team’s strategy for communicating internally among team members and company personnel, as well as externally with vendors and contractors.

This section includes the following:

·         Project Stakeholders and their communication requirements

·         Types of communications (progress reports, change management requests, configuration management documentation, release management documentation, risks and issues, financial reports, project plans, technical specifications, etc.) and their standard configurations and media

·         Communication type owners

·         Project organization/distribution lists

·         Communication infrastructure requirements (tools, internal and external tracking systems, etc.)

The progress report is an important document that should be detailed in this section. It describes how to collect and distribute the non-financial metrics and qualitative information that pertain to project progress, team performance, schedule slippage, risks, and issues that impact the project. The progress report should summarize completed work, report on milestones, and highlight new risks.

The Project Communication Approach should be organized into two sections: communication within the project and user communication.

The user communication section should include the processes, methods, and tools that will explain the solution to the customer and user communities to ensure rapid and trouble-free adoption of the solution. This should identify the key points along the project cycle where the solution will be presented to the users and provide a description of what is presented (user requirements, functional specifications, prototypes, etc.). This section should identify responsibilities for creating and delivering the user communication and identify a process for collecting user feedback for incorporation into technical documents and the solution.

Justification: A well-developed Project Communication Approach ensures that information is available to its users in a timely manner to facilitate decision-making. It sets the expectations with the customer and the project teams that information will be distributed in a standardized fashion and on a regular basis.]

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Team Environment Approach

[Description: The Team Environment Approach section defines the approach for creating the project team environment. It defines the physical environment requirements needed to conduct the project and the plan to establish that environment. Environmental elements include at least floor space (offices, meeting rooms, etc.) and equipment (computers, desks, chairs, telephones, etc.). The requirements should also define the location of the environmental elements and their proximity to each other. It also describes tools, systems, and infrastructure needed by the team, such as version-control software, developer tools and kit, test tools and kit, etc.

In addition to requirements, this section should determine infrastructure staging and the roles and responsibilities for environment setup. If necessary, the requirements can be identified by team role (development, logistics, testing, user education, etc.).

Justification: The Team Environment Approach ensures that the working environment is readily available in the timeframes set by the project schedule.]

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Risk and Issue Assessment

[Description: The Risk and Issue Assessment section identifies and quantifies all the risks and issues that have become apparent through the envisioning phase. This section should be developed early in the phase and be updated as more information is gathered. At the close of the envisioning phase, this section should contain all risks and issues that exist at that point in time. The section should include the following:

·         Risk Identification/Statements: a list of project risks and the conditions and consequences of each of the risks

·         Risk Analysis: the objective assessment of any risk’s significance; the calculation of risk exposure by assessing probability and impact for each item on the list of risks

·         Risk Plan: the actions that will prevent and minimize risks and provide a course of action if risks occur

·         Risk Priorities: the top “x” risks the project should focus on

Justification: Early identification of risk enables the team to begin managing those risks.]

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Project Glossary   

[Description: The Project Glossary defines the meaning and usage of the terms, phrases, and acronyms found in the documents used and developed throughout the opportunity, solution development, implementation, and operations management phases of product or solution development.

Justification: The Project Glossary helps to ensure good communication and understanding by providing knowledge, understanding, and common usage for terms, phrases, and acronyms.]

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