Closure Report
Background
Degrees provided by CMVM are subject to external accreditation, both in the Medical School and the Veterinary School:
- MBChB is accredited by the General Medical Council (GMC).
- The Veterinary Medicine degrees are accredited by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE).
To enable this accreditation, CMVM must prove how all the criteria set out by the accreditation body are met through the teaching undertaken in the curriculum. This is currently done through a system called COM:MAND, which is no longer fully fit for purpose, due to the changing accreditation requirements and the age of the technologies in use (which are approaching the end of supported life).
This is too complex to be fully undertaken through spreadsheets. Alternative solutions are available in the market and there is a need to find and (in future) implement a solution for each of the Schools in CMVM. Such solutions will be considered and compared with the viability of upgrading and enhancing COM:MAND.
Ideally, a common solution that could fulfil the requirement of both schools is preferred as their needs appear very similar. However, if there is a need to provide separate solutions then this will be done via two future projects.
Summary
Two artefacts have been produced: a Requirements Mind-Map and a Recommendations Paper. Each document has been base-lined as v1.0.
These documents are held to a mapped drive and stored in a sub-folder at: K:\ISAPPS\dsg\Projects\MVM133\Baselined Documents (with access restricted).
The project manager would like to acknowledge the support and commitment of all project team members:
| Susan Rhind | CMVM | Project Sponsor (Project Team Member) |
| David Kluth | CMVM | Project Sponsor (Project Team Member) |
| Sheila Fraser | CMVM | Head of IT (Project Team Member) |
| Andrew Millington | Digital Learning Applications and Media | Learning Application Development Team Manager |
| Arkadiusz Juszczyk | Digital Learning Applications and Media | Special Projects Manager Technology Development |
| Muriel Mewissen | Project Services | Portfolio Manager (Project Team Member) |
| Nicola Henderson | Project Services | Business Analyst (Project Team Member) |
Objectives
To ideally identify a single suitable product that could be used in the future for curriculum mapping within the medical and veterinary schools of the university.
Deliverables
| Objectives and Deliverables | Priority | Owner | Achieved |
| O.1 To understand what curriculum mapping tools are presently used within the medical and veterinary schools | |||
| D1.1 To support project understanding with existing systems overview/demonstration. | Must | Project Sponsors | Complete |
| D1.2 To document present (must have) functionality and future (should/would like) functionality as a set of formal requirements (via Mind Mapping). | Must | Business Analyst/Project Manager | Complete: Requirements Mind-Map v1.0 |
| D1.3 To assess the level of commonality in requirements for the Medical Degree (MBChB) and the veterinary medicine degrees. | Must | Business Analyst/Project Manager |
Complete: Requirements Mind-Map v1.0 |
| O.2 To assess curriculum mapping tools outwith the medical and veterinary schools | |||
| D2.1 Tools used within other Schools of this University. | Must | Business Analyst/Project Manager |
Complete: Recommendations Paper v1.0 |
| D2.2 Tools as marketed on the internet. | Must | Business Analyst/Project Manager |
Complete: Recommendations Paper v1.0 |
| D2.3 To liaise with IT development/production resource to define what would be required from a technology perspective to access/run the service. Technology confirmed that this would not expected to be a large task but would warrant more engagement to take forward under a delivery project. | Must | Project Manager | Complete: Recommendations Paper v1.0 |
| O.3 To produce an options paper with recommendations | |||
| D3.1 Purchase options will be considered on the basis of offered functionality, ease of maintenance and pricing model. | Must | Business Analyst/Project Manager | Complete: Recommendations Paper v1.0 |
Scope
|
No. |
Description | Project stayed within scope? |
| 1 |
To evaluate the current curriculum mapping solutions and future needs for the MBChB and Vet Degrees. |
Yes |
| 2 | An assessment was to be made as to which tools were available and the extent such tools met business requirements with functional offering and pricing models. This was to include a high-level view of the effort involved to upgrade the existing system to supported technologies and the functionality needed (small/medium/large sizing). | Yes |
| 3 | An options paper with findings will be presented to the project stakeholders with a summary and recommendation. | Yes |
Benefits
| No. | Description | Achieved? |
| 1 |
Bring clarity of requirement for a curriculum mapping tool that could be used across the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, and a recommendation as to how to proceed with implementation of the recommended solution. |
Yes |
Success Criteria
| No. | Description | Achieved? |
| 1 | The stakeholder group support the recommendation on the acquisition of a software product and/or service of choice. |
Sufficient detail has been gathered to make an informed decision on the future use of a curriculum mapping tool, in agreement with the key stakeholders.. |
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 42 days
Staff Usage Actual: 35 days
Staff Usage Variance: 7 days 83%
Explanation for variance
Whilst the WIS submission via the Portfolio manager had an estimate of 42 days.
The estimate based upon the WIS submission and the actual costs captured are shown below. An additional 1 day was recorded for effort from the Portfolio Manager making the total = 35 days.
The main area of disparity was during the execution phase with the Business Analyst (BA) being on annual leave and some of the tasks being taken forward by the Project Manager (PM).
| Phase | Est PM | Est BA | Act PM | Act BA | |
| Initiation | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | |
| Planning | 3 | 0 | 2.5 | 0 | |
| Execution | 7.5 | 19.5 | 13 | 13.5 | |
| Closure | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | |
| Technical Consultation | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| Contingency | 2.5 | 2.5 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 19 | 23 | 20.5 | 13.5 |
Key Learning Points
| Description | Recommendations | Impact |
| It was often difficult in getting stakeholders to provide timely feedback on the review of artefacts/attend project review meetings. |
|
Should implement as good practice |
| Some of the tools in use within the university were not familiar to the PM and whilst were intuitive, there was a one-off element of learning on the job that hadn't been catered for in the original estimates. |
|
Should implement as good practice |
Outstanding Issues
There are no outstanding issues.
For the next project that will develop the solution, the team will need to establish the number of graphical reports required, and, for Vets, determine whether to do this fully in COM:MAND or partly in Power BI, linking in to the underlying database. Regular feedback with the development team, no less than fortnightly, will help this to become an effective solution.