RITA | ITS | Lessons Learned: Create a strong System Manager role to focus accountability and clarify roles and responsibilities with multiple contractors.

Lesson

Create a strong System Manager role to focus accountability and clarify roles and responsibilities with multiple contractors.

Utah DOT’s experience managing the development and deployment of arterial and freeway management systems.

4/1/2003
Salt Lake City,Utah,United States

E-mail this Lesson E-mail | Comment on this Lesson Post a Comment

Background (Show)

Lesson Learned

Create a strong System Manager role to focus accountability and clarify roles and responsibilities with multiple contractors.

Many of the issues identified during this assessment pointed to the need for an expanded System Manager role in this project. As was mentioned previously, there were a number of contracts awarded to yield the deployment of the CommuterLink system. The System Manager supported UDOT staff in the design and day-to-day activity of the project. The System Manager was also assigned Integration activity that was originally assigned to the Systems Integration contract. More could have been done earlier in the deployment process, however, to alleviate some of the issues that arose later:

Establish a Configuration Management system. Given that the System Manager contract was competed and awarded prior to the Systems Integration contract, this should have been one of the initial tasks.
Establish a more significant role for the Systems Manager contract. With a more significant role, the Systems Manager contract could have been planning and executing Acceptance Testing. This would have provided a more independent assessment of the system performance.
Grant responsibility for end-to-end integration of the system to the System Manager. End-to-end integration activity was a challenge given the overlapping nature of the Systems Integration and Construction contracts. The System Manager activity could have provided the necessary bridge between those projects if it were responsible for the end-to-end integration of the system. This would have transformed the “Systems Integration” contract into a software development and deployment activity where the software applications are one of many components to the complete system.

An expanded System Manager role might have avoided some of the uncertainties in roles and responsibilities. It would also have focused accountability for overall system performance within the scope of a single contractor as opposed to the multiple contracts in place.

Lesson Comments

No comments posted to date

Comment on this Lesson

To comment on this lesson, fill in the information below and click on submit. An asterisk (*) indicates a required field. Your name and email address, if provided, will not be posted, but are to contact you, if needed to clarify your comments.