HERMES project management guide

HERMES is a method of the Swiss Federal Chancellery. Collabase is not affiliated with the Federal Chancellery, and this guide is not an official HERMES publication. For binding definitions, use the official reference manual on HERMES online.

Chapters

Chapter	Content
Introduction to HERMES	What HERMES is, who publishes it, which edition is current, and the two approaches: traditional and agile.
Phases	The HERMES phase model: Initiation, Concept, Implementation, Deployment, Execution and Closure.
Initiation	The lean first phase of every project: study, solution variants and the execution release.
Concept	Traditional approach: turning the chosen variant into requirements, concepts and an architecture.
Implementation	Traditional approach: building or configuring the solution and preparing deployment.
Deployment	Traditional approach: activating the solution, the organisation and operations.
Execution	Agile approach: developing the solution in iterations and releases.
Closure	The last phase of every project: hand-over, archiving and final evaluation.
Milestones and decisions	Quality gates between phases, the decisions taken there, and who takes them.
Roles	Project organisation, partner groups, hierarchy levels and the three roles every project needs.
Scenarios and modules	The five standard scenarios, the modules they combine, and how to adapt them.
Outcomes	Documents and states, the minimum required documents, and document templates.
Set up HERMES in Collabase	A step-by-step setup: project template, workflow, task types, fields, registers and approvals.

Source

This guide summarises the method in our own words. It is based on the HERMES reference manual Project management, 2022 edition, 3rd printing (revised), 31.12.2025, published by the Swiss Federal Chancellery, Digital Transformation and ICT Steering (DTI). The Swiss Confederation holds the copyright. HERMES is standardised as eCH-0054.

Welcome

Getting started guide