Keep it simple

The i-lign software is designed for ease of use.

The i-lign software, as a web based application is similar to a standard web-site and works best if the information it contains is economical and to the point. Think of a project as the on-line, electronic Executive Summary of the project business case. With this in mind:

Start Simple

It is tempting when first populating i-lign to fill it with all the information you can lay your hands on. However, you may find that much of this information is outdated or over-configured and you may end up removing it. We suggest you start simple and populate key areas of the application end-to-end. This will illustrate the key features of the software, and will start to identify areas that need additional work.

Language 

Keep Names as brief as possible. Goal and Strategy names, for example, should only be three or four words long. If you need to apply additional words, as is often the case, use the Description field, or where provided, the Notes field.

Keeping the language tight enables related reports and information list screens to be presented elegantly without being blown out by over-long fields. Just enough process It is likely that you will need some internal process to support i-lign. Such process is often required to interpret how some of the i-lign features will be applied in your organisation.

Key areas include

Project Priority

Project priority relies on a simple list, such as Low, Medium, High and Critical. You may wish to further define how projects fit with these bands and what is required to move them from one to another. 

Risk Management

Risks can be assigned numerical measures (1-10) against both likelihood and consequence. The combined (multiplied) total provides the overall score for the risk. E.g. A risk with a total of 75+ will be high. You may wish to define the factors which set risks at certain levels.

Project Type

This allows projects to be defined as business, IT, HR, financial etc. It is a good idea to start with some core, non-negotiable project types and add more as necessary. 

Project Lifecycles

Project Lifecycles allow stages and approval gateways to be set against projects. Some projects don't require lifecycles. Many will fit within a conventional lifecycle with the following stages: Initiation, Business Case, Implementation, Completion. It pays to keep the lifecycles simple at the outset, and add detail as required.

Portfolios

Portfolios are clusters of corporate goals and strategies, and programmes and projects across similar management dimensions. It can take a while to establish the portfolios that are appropriate for your organisation. One way to deal with portfolios at the outset is to set a single enterprise-wide portfolio, group everything under that portfolios and add additional portfolios as required.