Closure Report
Project Summary
This project provides a project based framework for monitoring our services, project and people readiness for start of term providing early warning of possible problems and time to respond.
Following on from the successful Start of Term project completed last year, we will again use a project approach to ensure the readiness of our projects, services and people for the start of term.
The framework delivered by this project will enable us to monitor our collective readiness for start of term and *does not* replace the very good work already being done within the ISG Divisions and across the University on start of term activities.
This outputs from this project will include:
- Confirmation and visibility of the staff responsible for start of term readiness in each ISG Division
- Visibility of the projects delivering services needed for the start of term and their delivery RAG status
- Visibility of the IT and Library Business Services needed for the start of term (based on the Service Catalogue) and their readiness RAG status
- Visibility of the people needed to deliver support services over the start of term period, including out of hours support, and their readiness RAG status
- Processes for reviewing readiness of services, projects and people at least fortnightly during the period June to October 2018
Objectives & Deliverables
Deliverables below are focused on monitoring the overall readiness and confidence for the start of session 2017/18.
| No. |
Description |
Status |
| O1 |
To reduce disruption to services as far as possible and to ensure that impact on users is minimised. |
Achieved |
| D1a |
Business context for 2018/19 start of semester 1 in particular any changes in student numbers, business processes, people or systems which may impact on risk. |
Achieved |
| D1b | Communications Plan to set expectations based on the experiences of ISG005. |
Achieved (NB it was agreed that the comms planning needs to be more comprehensive across IS for a future start of session project) |
| D2a |
Confirmation and visibility of the staff responsible for start of semester 1 readiness in each ISG Division, and staff people needed to deliver support services over the start of term period; this includes out of hours support, and readiness RAG status. |
Achieved |
| D2b | Confirmation and visibility of the staff responsible for start of semester 1 readiness in associated Business Partner areas e.g. Student Admin, Estates and staff people needed to deliver support services over the start of term period; this includes out of hours support, and readiness RAG status. | Achieved |
| D3 |
Visibility of planned changes to existing services from Change Management, and from projects in progress with their delivery RAG status. |
Achieved via link with CAB |
| D4 |
Visibility of planned new services required by start of semester 1 delivered by projects in progress and their delivery RAG status. |
Achieved |
| D5a | Risk and dependency management at portfolio level for all ISG projects needed for the start of semester 1. | Achieved |
| D5b | Visibility of Risk and dependency management at portfolio level for any ISG, Estates projects needed for the start of semester 1. |
Achieved (it was not possible to have detailed visibility of impact from Estates work by the time this project started, but Project Sponsor and PM have met with estates and have agreement on actions to improve this for future projects) |
| D6 | Visibility of the IT and Library Business Services needed for the start of semester 1 (based on the Service Catalogue) and their readiness RAG status. | Achieved |
| D7 | A single site providing an overview of projects, services, teams, and RAG statuses; this site should be accessible by anyone in IS to assess the position of the start of semester readiness; This will help establish the status of deliverables D2, D3, D4, D6. | Achieved |
| D8 | Processes for reviewing readiness of services, projects and people at least fortnightly during the period June to October 2018. |
Achieved (Agreed not necessary after start of session as updates then covered daily through standard operation). |
| D9 | Ensuring clarity and effectiveness of the change management process focusing on the rules, process and details of the change control period before and during Start of Semester 1. |
Achieved via link with CAB |
| D10 |
Ensuring measurement and reporting of Start of Semester KPIs with a comparison against the equivalent data for last year. These KPIs will include:
|
Achieved see Metrics and KPIs |
Benefits
- Improved visibility across ISG and the University promoting awareness of service changes and improvements.
- Improved data on impact of previous and planned changes to assist making better decisions during the start of term period.
- Improved student experience.
- Reduction to cost in ISG staff time resolving incidents resulting from service changes.
- Reduction in costs to IS and the University of managing Major Incidents.
- establish start and maintain start of term statistics and information which can be used for future years.
Success Criteria
Supporting the start of semester 1 with improved overall visibility of:
- readiness of services and any expected issues.
- staff resources required to support start of term activities and services, and their availability.
- improvement in overall satisfaction score.
Analysis of Resource Usage
Staff Usage Estimate: 50 days
Staff Usage Actual: 33 days
Staff Usage Variance: 34 % underspent
Other Resource Estimate: 35 days
Other Resource Actual: 30 days
Other Resource Variance: 14 % overspend
Outcome
Explanation for variance
IS Applications actual effort was lower than had been estimated for the following reasons:
- The project was able to make use of a significant amount of effort from a Project Services student intern to assist with project management activity; this effort was recorded but was not chargeable to the project - if it had been charged then the variance would have been much less.
- The Project Sponsor was highly engaged with the project and took a high level of responsibility for communications especially with SMT; this took some load off the PM effort.
- Some of the work done on the previous year's project (ISG005) to establish process helped ensure that this aspect of the project was more efficient.
- Decision to use the wiki page as the single point for all updates to information on projects and services increased efficiency all round.
Key Learning Points
Main points are explored in more detail in the Lessons Learned report.
Top level summary:
Positive
Project successful in providing visibility of projects and services ahead of start of session.
Project team worked well together - many of the same people as the previous year; simplification of the status updating process made this year's project more efficient and more productive use of stakeholder's time.
Stakeholder engagement was an improvement on previous year.
Negative
Engagement not high in some areas.
It has become increasingly clear that by the time the start of session readiness projects starts, it is too late to influence a number of activities due to the necessarily long lead time on many of them - for example:
- Estates projects which potentially impact on teaching space at the start of session
- Communications involving web based or printed media
Recommendation that these and other strands of work (upon which the next start of session readiness project will have dependencies) are managed within a dedicated programme of work packages.
Outstanding Issues
None.