Texas Education Agency Project Management System
Creation and continuous development of the Creative Services sprint planning tools, ticket request system, and performance management dashboards
Immediately after joining TEA, I began building a set of project management tools to support the launch of a new Creative Services team, which provided design, content, marketing, branding, and editorial support to teams, programs, and initiatives all across the agency. This brand new team had virtually no processes in place, and the sole method of tracking work was one spreadsheet with a form.
As someone who loves systems and naturally thrives on planning, I immediately introduced my team and other agency stakeholders to Agile methodology. Based on their input, I developed from scratch a customized, robust, Agile-based system to manage the full life cycle of each project—as well as track performance metrics and communicate them in a way that met the needs and expectations of agency leadership.
The Creative Services project management system was viewed as an agency-wide exemplar and was replicated by other teams. It included an internal project request system and searchable archive, satisfaction surveys, a customized set of sprint planning tools built in Smartsheet, a SharePoint site for effectively organizing and archiving creative assets, and Power BI performance management dashboards created in collaboration with the data analytics team. I also led my team in adopting Agile sprint planning practices adapted to suit the more traditional atmosphere of a government agency.
Metrics served as evidence the system was highly effective. As of last reporting, 98% of our work requests had been completed on schedule, 96.9% of our sprint goals were met, and 100% of clients agreed that deliverables met expectations.
