At ICA Minnesota, project-based work represents non-reoccurring work that typically takes up around 30% of our overall work as an organization. Each project – which is time-limited and produces one or more concrete deliverables – is scoped out, formally approved, and assigned a project team. Every project team includes a Project Lead to drive the work and a Management Champion available for guidance, and most projects include one or more additional team members.
Projects come in different shapes, including Coordinated Entry changes, federal reports (such as the PIT and System Performance Measures), and pilot projects. They also come in different sizes, with smaller projects taking as little as 10 hours and many large projects taking well over 100 hours. Projects are also distinct from our ongoing or day-to-day work, like operating the Helpdesk or meeting with stakeholders.
When does a project become a project?
The work is not part of a core job description of an ICA employee.
The work has a Start Date and End Date (ie not ongoing).
The work requires more than 10 hours of time.
The work requires cross-department staffing (oversight of more than one manager) or, more generally, more than one person’s brain.
How a Project Gets Booked – External
There is a well-trodden path for taking your idea and turning it into a project. Here are the basic mile markers you could expect.
ICA staff receive a request for something from an external partner.
ICA staff ask preliminary questions of partner to assist them in understanding if this work meets project threshold requirements (see above).
If so, ICA staff draft a Project Proposal in partnership with the partner, clearly articulating the goal, context, value add, and time estimates of the work.
Once complete ICA staff submit the Project Proposal to ICA MN’s Project Portfolio to be reviewed internally at ICA by the Project Portfolio Management Team and externally by the Policies and Prioritization Committee (P&P), a sub-committee of Minnesota’s HMIS Governing Board.
A decision is made whether or not to approve the project. If denied, the external partner is notified. If approved, ICA schedules the work when the right resources are available.
If you have an idea for HMIS, and do not know who to share it with, please reach out to our Helpdesk at mnhmis@icalliances.org.
Priority Statements
What Do We Want to be Driving Towards?
The Policy and Prioritization Committee (P&P) is charged with setting priority for ICA’s project work. To assist in carrying out the task of reviewing and prioritizing ICA’s project work, in early 2021 P&P established and implemented six Priority Statements. The Priority Statements represent feedback received by a variety of HMIS partners at the HMIS Annual Meeting, HMIS Implementation Committee monthly meetings, HMIS Governance, and internal ICA surveys.
Each project is ranked on a scale of 0 – 4. Generally, here is what the range indicates:
0 = does not contribute at all or degrades progress towards outcome
1 = small contribution towards outcome
4 = large contribution towards outcome
The P&P Committee puts the Priority Statements to work to measure how ICA MN projects contribute to the overall priorities of MN HMIS. This helps:
To make good use of limited resources.
To make sure decisions made because of capacity constraints are in service of higher goal of ending homelessness.
Facilitate the work of the joint governance system, allowing partners, as represented on P&P, inform what work gets done or gets done next.