ARCHIVED - Management of Large Public IT Projects - Canada

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2.3 SIGNET Renewal Project

SIGNET 2000 + is the computing environment that allows the staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and eleven other departments to exchange messages and access application tools at any of 158 Canadian government offices around the world. Delivered ahead of time and under budget, the success of its development and global deployment is attributable to excellent project planning and management, plus an effective industry/government partnership.

Objectives and scope

Late in 1998, testing confirmed that the existing 16 bit SIGNET platform was not Year 2000 compliant. This mission critical platform supported all non-classified messaging (about 30 million messages annually) and applications serving some 8,500 users worldwide. The legacy system was no longer supported by the vendor. Quick, effective, and economical design and implementation of a replacement was essential.

Project challenges included:

• The team had 18 months from identification of the problem to select a product, design, develop, test. procure components, and implement the system at 158 locations around the world before the fixed deadline of the Year 2000 transition.

• The nature of business conducted in offices overseas required that SIGNET be updated with minimum disruption to their operations which included presidency of the UN Security Council and the Kosovo crisis;

• The global scale of the system, representation of foreign nationals among both users and technical staff, and mobility of staff in general produced special challenges including: enhanced security; remote administration and user access; single sign-on anywhere in the world; compatibility with data from 1500 existing applications; training in several languages; and local alphabet support (including Russian, Chinese and Japanese).

Costs and benefits

The project had a budget of $46 million, including engineering, replacement of 345 servers, client and enterprise software, travel and training. The project was completed four weeks early and $1.9 million under budget.

The introduction of a standard workstation platform and remote systems maintenance is reducing system operational costs. This is allowing system administrators abroad to expand their user support role, as they have to spend less time on network and server maintenance.

SIGNET 2000 + has increased service availability from 91.8% to 99.5%, which has reduced lost client time by an estimated $2.7 million annually.

Total productivity increases of $94 million, mainly from new application functionality, are anticipated over the five-year life of the project. In addition, the productivity deterioration expected if the existing platform was retained for a further five years was even greater than this.

Critical success factors

The success of SIGNET 2000 + was largely attributable to close attention paid to the following factors:

• The imminence of the Year 2000 required careful scope planning, analysis and resolution to meet the stringent schedule and avoid "scope creep", yet deliver cost-beneficial user functionality;

• Detailed project planning, management and monitoring that included comprehensive and timely procurement, logistics and communications planning and execution;

• Adequate resources of funding, appropriately skilled technical and client staff and facilities available as identified in the project schedule, requiring considerable attention to resource acquisition and planning early in the project life; where contractors were used, technology transfer from contractors to in-house staff was built in as required;

• Effective quality assurance and control of deliverables, documentation and a formal change management process at all stages of the project to avoid delays or costly retrofits overseas;

• Close consultation with client groups and representatives; and unrelenting communications with the user community to prepare them for change;

• Effective and appropriately timed education for clients and technical training for field technical and support staff including "distance education" for reduced costs and greater flexibility.

Potential risks and risk management

The major risks facing the project were schedule risks: the risk of not completing the project before Year 2000. These risks were compounded by procurement risks in the form of three trade tribunal challenges and the risk of procurement delays which are common in government.

The premium on resources (contractors and hardware) associated with the Year 2000 "crisis" heightened the risk of cost overruns, as did the conflicting demands for resources to continue maintaining the unique but arthritic legacy environment that was no longer supported by the vendor.

There were situational risks such as the intrusion of local and international events into the implementation schedule (for example, UN Security Council activities, Team Canada visits, and the Kosovo crisis), and the risk of losing technical expertise at a time of intense demand for such resources.

There were also technical risks of not being able to solve compatibility and software integration problems, or being unable to migrate the myriad of existing applications in use in missions around the world.

To counter these risks, a risk management process was established and rigorously followed, including two independent risk assessments of the project. The component build schedule and QA reports on the build integration tests helped measure earned value, and contingency plans, including "off-ramps" were prepared.

Project management plan

The project used two main sources for its project management regime: Microsoft Solutions Framework, and the Treasury Board Secretariat Enhanced Management Framework (EMF).

From Microsoft the team adopted three main guidelines:

• The project should be a team of peers; project management should stress shared responsibility for the project, with individual accountability for components;
• There must be a strong commitment to good quality management practices;
• The project must employ good internal and external communications.

From the EMF the management team adopted the following:

• Top down and bottom up schedule and cost estimation, based on a detailed work breakdown structure;
• Project Charter and integrated project planning system including a basic mechanism for earned value tracking;
• Formal deliverable, schedule and cost tracking and reporting.

The adoption of these guidelines led to a project management team that had, as equals, managers for: product and communications; user education; implementation; development and infrastructure; the project office; and quality assurance. They reported to a Project Director, who in turn reported to a Board of IMT Directors chaired by the Department's CIO. The Project Champion was the ADM for corporate services.

Twice weekly "war room" exercises were scheduled, in which any team member could raise any issue they felt was critical, have it discussed and an action plan struck. Because senior management always attended the war room meetings, team members had the means to get quick action on these issues. This increased people's involvement in and commitment to the project.

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