I ran across some very unique work from the state of Missouri in the area of project oversight the other day. Missouri’s well documented approach to project oversight is not only a great state government practice; it is by far the best documented practice in the public or private sector that I could find in this area. The project oversight methodology was nominated for a NASCIO recognition award in 2004 under the State IT Management category.

The five guidance documents on Missouri’s project oversight website represent a comprehensive, end-to-end project oversight methodology. In addition to detailed process flows, artifact definitions and templates, the methodology also includes simple but very useful explanations, such as the table illustrating the differences between project management and project oversight, which I’ve reproduced below.

ProjectOversight.png (7 KB)

In my mind, items such as Missouri’s project oversight approach are the types of knowledge capital that would have been great seeds on which to found the Government Open Code Collaborative (GOCC), which I’ve blogged about in the past. Since the GOCC appears to be all but dead, I don’t know what other alternatives are available for inter-State exchange of government practices, outside of NASCIO. I’ve decided to mirror Missouri’s documents on my site and have included links below. Hopefully, Missouri can find a way to proactively open source these documents, even if no common exchange exists for such materials.

Project Oversight, Part 1 (598 KB)
Project Oversight, Part 2 - Chapter 1 (2086.5 KB)
Project Oversight, Part 2 - Chapter 2 (2019.5 KB)
Project Oversight, Part 2 - Chapter 3a (1820.5 KB)
Project Oversight, Part 2 - Chapter 4 (1042 KB)