Programme Management System

A research programme can pose special challenges both of programme governance and project management. Effective information management is an essential part of meeting these challenges, but must be carefully tailored to the organisational and cultural environment.

Polaris has provided support to the R&D Department of the UK’s Rail Safety and Standards board (RSSB) in developing an intranet-based system to enable a closer integration of the work of individual project managers with a streamlined governance process. Thus the system embodies a vision of a new way of working, which clarifies the roles of stakeholders, research providers, senior managers and project managers.

Much of Polaris’ support was therefore focused on understanding the detailed information requirements which this vision implies, and involved both:

• an analysis of new and emerging requirements
• a thorough review of existing processes and tools
• a detailed specification of functional and non-functional requirements
• a detailed mockup of the planned user interface