Closure Review
Contributors
Role | Who | Department | Date |
Project Sponsor | Rebecca Gaukrodger | SRA | 18/12/13 |
Project Manager | Ruth McCallum | SSP | 18/12/13 |
College Rep - SCE | Wendy Magowan / Tom Ward | SCE | 18/12/13 |
College Rep - HSS | Lisa Brannan / Cameron Murdoch | HSS | 18/12/13 |
College Rep – MVM | Emma Rowson | MVM | 18/12/13 |
SACS Support | Brandi Headon | SACS Support | 18/12/13 |
IS Support | Douglas Adamson / Suran Perera | IS Applications | 19/12/13 |
SACS | Barry Neilson | SACS | 18/12/13 |
Developer | Tomasz Pogoda | SSP | 16/12/13 |
Developer | Marissa Warner-Wu | SSP | 16/12/13 |
Project Review
Were the project goals met? Yes the project delivered successfully for the 2014 admissions cycle and all colleges are using the functionality to process applications within EUCLID from start to finish. The project fully removed the old style screens within EUCLID and replaced them with the new look and feel web screens.
Were the project deliverables fully or partially accomplished?They were fully met as the software is being used by all UCAS admissions staff for all of the cycle this far. All stories which were not implemented were prioritised by the business.
Deliverables Achieved
1) Review held by an external facilitator including all staff involved in this process and the SACS business analyst and the IS technical lead. 2) Identification of Business Process changes (non IS) 3) Identification of system changes required to improve the processes both inside and outside of EUCLID 4) Prioritised and estimated list of system changes - prioritised by a representative user group from across the colleges. 5) Agile Process process delivering as many changes as possible for the allocated resources. 6) Ideally multiple releases to Live of changes.(Not Achieved) 7) Use new web framework with Bootstrap and E-Vision to produce new style web screens.
Cost / Schedule Summary
IS Apps Staff Resources Estimated on Project Brief (Days) | 157 days IS Apps resource |
Actual IS Apps Staff Resources Used (% Variance) | 198 days IS Apps resource |
Planned Delivery Date (go Live) from Project Brief | 23/9/13 |
Actual Delivery Date (go Live) | 23/9/13 |
Planned Delivery Date for post go Live from Project Brief | Dec 2013 |
Actual Delivery Date for post go Live | Dec 2013 |
Project Manager's Commentary on Reasons For Variance From Plans
Main issues resolved around trying to get the Agile process to work especially in relation to testing and what should be done when. Alongside this also had additional days added for unidentified requirements which could not be de-scoped.
Original | 157 days |
Developer Working at higher than 80%. | 6 days |
BOXI Changes missing from Original Scope | 4 days |
Addition of Admissions Dashboard ad a priority requirement - Once it was established that it was technically achievable. | 10 days |
UAT Bug Fixing - Did not leave time in the Iterations for Regression Test had to carry out at the end. | 8 days |
Performance Issues – Need to add an index which Tribal did not provide. | 3 days |
Post Implementation Support – See comments in lessons learned. | 10 days |
| 198 days |
Lessons Learnt
What went well? A reasonably large allocation of post implementation support time was used to allow the screens and the business process to bed in together. The project manager believes that this level of service was required to allow the business to be comfortable with the screens. This would be a model that would be recommended for a similar project in the future but should be planned into the project as early as possibl.e
Agile working with the development team went will for the Business Analyst and made the project feel like a real team effort.
Working with the business went well and a level of trust that the project would deliver was built up during the project and help with the implementation period while business processes were still being worked through.
** Comments from SCE College Office
Now that we are well into the cycle, and have had a reasonable amount of experience of using the new UG system, I wanted to feed back to you on how the project has gone. Overall, it has gone extremely well - the system is serving us well, performance has been good, and your team have been extremely supportive.
** Comments from HSS College Office
At the UG Admissions Officer meeting it was raised how well the project had gone and the level of support they had received to implement the new processes. They also raised that the model where there was a second follow up project where any larger issues could be addressed gave them more confidence that they would get a system which would fit their needs.
What didn’t go so well?
Where changes are cycle driven such as UCAS Admissions it is unrealistic to expect the business to accept large software changes during the cycle. This is a barrier to trying to carry out true Agile Development.
The transition to IS support for the project was not as smooth as it could have been as it was not clear what processes needed to be followed. This issue has now been turned into a possitive as it meant that a meeting was held to discuss how handover should be managed and as a result the next project to go live SAC015 has come up with a clear set of processes and documents for the transition process. This includes a simpler more straightforward set of documents and processes to keep communication open during the post go-live period with Development and Support working together on any issues identified.
The new Agile development process created the situation where when the changes were implemented to Live they had to be done as a step per user story. This was identified as an issue and a big overhead on support. This issue has been addressed and will not happen in future projects.
If you had a project like this again, what would you improve?
Although the user involvement was quite high should try to get the users event more involved in the two week cycle in terms of testing.
Outstanding Issues
These will all be picked up by the next project which will start with a review and a prioritisation of everything which has been raised but not resolved or was deprioritised by the first project.