A case study in implementing an organizational process to manage project status through metrics

A case study in implementing an organizational process to manage project status through metrics
Marty Safirstein, IT Portfolio Manager; Feno Monaco, Manager
Allstate Insurance

Introduction:

Allstate Insurance is the second largest property and casualty insurance company in the United States . Our IT department that supports the property and casualty applications employs nearly 2500 employees.

We have embarked on a journey to improve the performance of our IT department through process improvement initiatives by establishing organizational standard processes. We have also introduced a measurement system to evaluate the effectiveness of these processes.

Learning Objectives:

Understanding how a real-life organizational process was developed and implemented will provide the audience a model they may be able to adopt into their own organizations

Outline:

Background and history – how we got to where we are
Process domains – how we have grouped the processes we have identified into “domains” and our strategy for integrating them
Process governance – how we prioritize processes to implement and obtain approvals
Organizational standard process strategy – selecting the processes, organizing them into releases
Process case history – the “Management Review” process (a process for assessing project health through metrics)
Process measurement – how we measure process effectiveness through our Organizational Process Measurement program

Biography:

Mr. Safirstein has over 30 years experience in information systems including 6 years at Allstate. He is currently leading the development and deployment of the Management Review process. He has participated in the development of the Organizational Measurement Program for the past 2.5 years, has presented the topic of IT Architecture Governance, and presented several estimation and measurement topics at ICSPI 2006.

Feno M. Monaco, PMP, is the manager for the Estimation & Metrics (E&M) team at Allstate Insurance. Additionally, Feno has 10 years global consulting experience, where he spent 5 of those years managing a global E&M team. Mr. Monaco has built E&M teams from idea to full operational capability, while implementing processes to support external assessments of CMM L3 maturity in multiple geographies. Along with his PMP certification, Mr. Monaco is a SW-CMM assessor and CMMI SCAMPI team member trained.