Milestone III is intended to have the Project Manager addresses a basic set of questions necessary to warrant approval to deploy the system. Key issues to be addressed are whether the project has adequately demonstrated through test that the system meets its functional and performance requirements and whether the system is adequately supported by documentation, training, IT security, etc.  Depending on the nature of a specific project, this decision Milestone can also be split into a Milestone IIIa for approval of limited initial deployment, and a Milestone IIIb for full, enterprise-wide deployment. 

Accomplishing the project goals in accordance with user requirements, security requirements, statutory requirements, telecommunication requirements, and the enterprise architecture is manifested in the system and technical design. Along with schedule and cost performance the results of project design and test efforts will be reported at the Milestone 3 Briefing. Specific areas of interest include reliability, performance, stress and user acceptance testing; and security certification. The briefing will include the project risk profile; cost assessments; and an assessment of change management processes.

In accordance with security directives, the Project Manager should submit a security Certification and Accreditation (C&A) package, to the  Office of Cyber Security (OCS) for new information systems. OCS provides support to the System Owner and Project Manager for accomplishing the C&A process. The C&A process ensures that system’s security controls meet all applicable requirements and are in place and working properly. Security is a significant topic of the Milestone III Briefing.  A Full Authority to Operate (FATO) is necessary prior to a system going into production.  Please see Appendix I for more information.

At Milestone III Project Managers must have completed rows 4 and 5 of the Zachman Framework, thereby validating that they have continued to respect the allocated functional baseline established for the project at Milestone I. Additionally, they should have defined the performance metrics to be collected during in-service operation of the system as the basis for evaluating goal achievement in row 6 of the Zachman Framework. Subsequently, during Milestone IV post implementation reviews, PMs are expected to report on the actual performance of the information systems in these areas.

IT Operations Considerations

Projects that will involve organizational telecommunications and operations infrastructure should consider the following questions leading up to Milestone III:

Network Capacity Planning:

▲    What are the project’s final performance requirements for:

■        Network availability?

■        Network latency?

■        Network packet loss?

■        Network jitter?

■        Network quality of service?