Completion Report
Project Summary:
This project was hampered by issues resulting from insufficiently understood requirements within the team, unclear roles & responsibilities for the analysis and design, and frequent changes of IS personnel. The project completed more than 12 months behind the planned date and more than 40% over the original estimate. Despite these issues, the team's dogged determination has allowed the project to successfully deliver a series of improvements to the SITS/Finance interfaces which have enhanced Finance's ability to administer students' fees and so in turn have contributed to an improved student experience. Some valuable lessons have been learned by all parties involved in the project and these will be inform future projects so that they can be more effectively delivered.
Deliverables achieved
- FIN075-001 Missing Customer Issue
- FIN075-002 Sponsor Address Failing to Update
- FIN075-003 Processing Deceased/Health Reason Withdrawls
- FIN075-004 Problematic Addresses for eFin Customers
- FIN075-008 Historic Feed of Student Programme Data
- FIN075-016 Debt Chasing Information
Deliverables not achieved
- FIN075-005 Volume Issue with Customer Load - descoped by agreement with Business Reps
- FIN075-006 Automation of Customer and Product Imports - transferred to project FIN087
- FIN075-009 FPA Invoices - descoped by agreement with Business Reps
- Production of debt flag information for Registry - descoped by agreement with Business Reps
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 206 days
Staff Usage Actual: 238 days
Staff Usage Variance: 16%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
In addition to the 237 days of IS Apps resource shown in the stats above, 43 days of SACS (now SSP) resource were used on this project, giving an overall total of 280 days.
Although the resource stats above suggest only a 16% variance on original IS Apps estimate, the scope of the project was significantly reduced when the automated feed deliverable was passed to FIN087, then the FPA invoices, volume issue and debt flag deliverables were de-scoped due to escalating budget. This represented 41 days of effort being de-scoped. Therefore a more accurate reflection of the variance from original estimation would be 44%. The reasons for this variance are reflected in the key learning points section below.
Key Learning Points:
| Learning point | Details |
| Roles & responsibilities not clearly defined | The working relationship between the IS Apps developers and SACS (now SSP) was not clearly defined for the analysis and design of the required changes. This resulted in conflict over the design of the historic feed as the detailed SITS analysis undertaken by SACS was not utilised in the development. This caused further issues later in the project when the historic feed was being tested, as the specs did not match the delivered solution. Future projects should work much closer with SACS and have clearly defined roles & responsibilities. For interfaces between SITS & Finance, SACS should be considered a customer of the project and engaged with in the same manner as for FInance. |
| Insufficient handover between developers | The project had 3 different developers during its 2 year lifecycle. The original developer was experienced in both SITS and Finance systems & processes, but when they left the University and handed over to their replacement a lot of that knowledge was not passed over. When the 2nd developer then left the department there was no formal handover and only the documentation was left. Our 3rd and final developer did very well under the circumstances but was hindered by the insufficient and out of date documentation and missing contextual knowledge. Future projects must ensure that adequate handover between developers takes place and that time is allowed to bring the new developer up to speed. SACS have been asked to consider adding more narrative to their SITS specs to assist in the sharing of SITS business context. |
| Unclear business requirements/objectives | The business analysis for this project was undertaken under a different 'parent' project (FIN085) and did not contain sufficient information on the business needs and objectives. Future child projects should ensure that time is allowed to properly review the analysis with the business and gain a proper understanding of the requirements before proceeding to design/development. |
| Deteriorating team focus | Because the project became very drawn out, resources were assigned to other projects and were only able to work on testing/issues inbetween other higher priority commitments. This resulted in team disengagement which further delayed the project. Future projects which find themselves in these circumstances should consider temporarily suspending the project whilst the team regroups and refocuses on the objectives. |
Outstanding issues:
- Outstanding Jira to backfill Dev/Test & update TAD (if appropriate) - complete
- Notes on historic feed for support - complete
- Test/Dev Business Objects to be amended to connect using new user account - complete
- Source code to be logged in SVN - complete