Introduction to Project Types

Overview

A project type is an essential component used to classify the kind of work to be done on a project. Looking at past projects you can see that projects fall into similar classes of work. For example, your organization deploys new software several times a month, so this could be classified as a Software Implementation project type. Or if you use Enterprise Service Management (ESM) to manage facilities projects, this could classified as a Building Management project type. Additionally, project types are grouped using type categories. While types are used to specify the kind of work that should occur on a project, categories allow similar types to be grouped so that they can be found in a more intuitive manner.

Types define many of the attributes and default values that will be applied to a project or request.

All project requests go through an evaluation before becoming actual projects. Project types can be used to assign the review of a project request to a specific person, or to start a particular workflow. Strategic, complex, and high-budget projects might go through an advanced governance process – while less complex and lower budget projects may just have one or two steps to an evaluation before getting approved.

The project type can also be used when creating reports. Individuals often create a pie graph showing the percentages of active projects by project type.

Examples

Below are a few examples of how project type categories, and types could be used.

  • Academic
    • Research
  • Facilities
    • Building Management
    • New Construction
    • Renovation
  • IT
    • Application Implementation
    • Business Intelligence and Analytics
    • Digital Marketing
    • Infrastructure
    • SaaS Deployment
    • Service Retirement
    • Software Upgrade
    • Website

Gotchas & Pitfalls

Remember, once a project type’s projects, requests, and opportunities are reassociated there is no way to undo that action in the same way that the original reassociation occurred. Those individual items would have to be manually associated again with the previous project type.

Need additional help or have issues

For support, requests may be submitted anytime using the appropriate Enterprise Service Management form. Requests generate a Ticket which will be worked in order received and urgency by IT Employees with the knowledge and permissions to assist with the request.

For immediate assistance please review the Contact Us page for the appropriate support group.

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