Completion Report
Project Summary:
Background
The purpose of this project is to develop a consolidated set of system tools within EUCLID to administer the PGR student lifecycle. Currently these tools exist partly in EUCLID and partly in PPMD.
The core reason that the project is required is to move the functionality and data which is currently held within the Postgraduate Progression Monitoring Database (PPMD) into EUCLID so that all of the centrally delivered PGR administration functions can be administered in one place removing duplication of data and processes.
Project Goals
Were the project goals met? Yes
The goals of the projects were:
To create a PGR thesis workflow within EUCLID to allow for transparency of the process for all Student Hub users, and allow for monitoring of student thesis examination within the core Student Record System. This will remove the need for the current PPMD software with all data and processes now held in EUCLID.
Does the Project Sponsor agree that this project can be closed at this time? Yes
Deliverables achieved
The following deliverables were achieved (from project brief):
The deliverables of the project will fall into the following areas:
Core Functionality 1) Set-up of examiners data and linkage to students record. 2) Thesis workflow tracking of all inputs including those from examiners. 3) Thesis events and date tracking to monitor progress from intention to submit to completion. Including upload of related documents. 4) Progress and Outcomes for all events for a PGR student to recorded. 5) Draw a clear distinction in the students record between corrections and re-submission with different workflow/processes for each. 6) Ability for staff to edit letter templates themselves rather than through Student Systems support team. 7) Formal Letters to student produced and saved against the students record to document decisions made. 8) Allow full access to all parties to the data and processes (Students / Administrative Staff / Academics). 9) Consolidation of the concessions processing within EUCLID providing workflows for their approval.
Data Set-Up 10) Data Migration (only included Thesis Titles from PPMD)
Reporting 11) Expose additional data captured within the ESSMU universe alongside current student dataset.
Support Information 14) Produce a set of online resources to support the new software tailored to the different audience groups.
Archiving 13) Provide access to historical data as required
The following deliverables were not described in the Brief but were delivered:
- Automated Change requests triggered through the Programme Change functionality based on processes completed within the workflow
- Award process created and triggered through the Programme Change functionality and removed from manually processing in Unidesk per record
- Addition of Thesis examination reason codes against student status to advise where student is in the process. Eg. Fully Matriculated/Resubmission required on a Resubmission outcome
Not Delivered:
Archiving 12) Decommissioning of PPMD – phased approach as we deliver the final parts of functionality that were missed from scope. Only affecting CAHSS at this stage. This has been highlighted in the outstanding actions section and allocated as future work.
Outcomes and Benefits
Did the project deliver a solution to the problems being addressed? Yes
What are the benefits for the business? How did it impact the business?
System Consolidation
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Description |
Benefit |
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Consolidation of the PGR data in one system will save staff a large amount time in administering the student record of this type of student across two systems. It will also reduce the amount of time spent keeping EUCLID and PPMD in line for the elements which currently overlap but are required to be held in the two systems to support different business processes. |
0.5 day of staff time per year for each PGR student
4000 x 0.5 = 2000 days
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The version of Coldfusion which PPMD is currently implemented on will require it be upgraded if PPMD is still required. If PPMD is removed then this cost will no longer be required. |
Ongoing costs removed |
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Support days for PPMD will no longer be required both IS APPs and Student Systems. |
6 – 10 days support cost |
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Improved tools which moving to EUCLID provides - notes/documents/letters/workflow. Building on the framework of the newly developed Student Hub |
Usability |
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Framework on which PREP project can be built on within EUCLID |
Scalability |
Access to Schools and Students
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Description |
Benefit |
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Currently all communication between the college and school about this data is done outside of EUCLID and PPMD as schools had read-only access to PPMD, but held limited data. |
0.25 day of staff time per year for each PGR student
4000 x 0.25 = 1000 days |
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Current student have no visibility on student self-service of these elements of their student record, they cannot see the examiners set-up for them, they cannot see the dates which are recorded for thesis to be submitted, they also cannot easily see if they have had concessions granted and what impact this has had on their end dates and thesis dates. |
Cost of time for staff to answer questions about record rather than being able to refer to self service Also pulling in a set of students not currently using EUCLID into using this as source of information. Would not need to email students outwith the system – students notified automatically through concession request function in EUCLID |
Cost Summary
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IS Apps Staff Resources Estimated on Project Brief (Days) |
135 days IS Apps resource |
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Actual IS Apps Staff Resources Used (% Variance) |
195.5 days IS Apps resource (+45%) , broken down: 175.5 - SSP IS: days 20 -Other IS Apps: days |
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SSP non IS Staff Resources Estimated on Project Brief (Days) |
135 days |
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Actual SSP non IS Staff Resources (Days) (% variance) |
44.5 days (-67%) |
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Other Resources Estimated on Project Brief |
7 days from Student Record Team |
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Planned Delivery Date (go Live) from Project Brief |
6 July 2016 |
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Actual Delivery Date (go Live) |
26 September 2016 |
Outcome
Explanation for variance:
Budget
Budget increases resulted from the inclusion of extra functionality (External EUCLID Access) adding 30 days in PICCL 6 and the PPMD Cold Fusion upgrade adding 9 days in PICCL7. The upgrade of PPMD allowed for the stability of the product while EUCLID development was completed and delivered in August.
Budget was increased later in the project due to further development and re-work needed after some further analysis was completed resulting in some functionality changes, this resulted in an additional 21 days which was addressed in PICCL11 . This resulted from the change in Project Management and the deeper understanding and analysis of the data and software impacts. A final bug fix required the final change in budget increasing a further 7 days on PICCL 15.
Delivery Date
Due to some lost resource time close to the delivery of the project (staff absence etc) we needed to split the delivery in two; first delivering the PGR Thesis workflow in time for the peak period in August/September, and secondly deliver External EUCLID access later in September. This enabled us to complete the PGR Thesis Lifecycle development holistically ready for peak processing, and to develop the external access in a separate iteration ready for early in the Academic Session.
Key Learning Points:
For projects involving both SSP IS and Other IS Apps resources, note which lessons are specifically for SSP and which are for IS Apps generally.
- What went well?
- High level of engagement from user group (2 reps from each College) – commitment to collaborative and streamlined process for all Colleges integral to success of project
- Student engagement workshop run to ensure the development maximised student needs in the transparency of the functionality in Student Self Service
- Student Records Team (SRT) involvement in the development and testing of automated requests triggered throughout the workflow
- Able to deliver some functionality available against all students which was developed as part of this Project. Eg the consolidated Concessions table for students
- Team work between the two developers worked well and were incredibly responsive to working through issues raised by user group and project team members
- What didn’t go so well?
- Project Manager was seconded during project development, and required change in project manager
- Limited engagement from College PGR Super users for Live EUCLID setup
- Rebuilding of some already developed functionality due to some further analysis where the original solution was not able to be achieved
- Unable to automate student status updates directly against the record – was only able to generate automated requests to the SRT for record updates
- Development dependencies and bugs with testing prevented the rollout of iterative testing to the user group early in the project – so only one large bulk testing period was achieved
- BI work was developed and delivered after the functionality was being used in Live – this left users with an inability to report and track submissions at all until this work was delivered and reports written
- If you had a project like this again, what would you improve?
- Plan more structured sprint iterations to encourage iterative testing from users. So many dependencies were encountered in the development to prevent this from happening
- Document project decisions from User group in a structured way outside of email
- Deliver BI objects and changes when delivering the functionality – with some core reports. Although this was delayed due to time and resources restraints in the project, it put the users at a disadvantage until delivered
- The closure report should be circulated shortly after delivery, even if final closure is delayed to allow any issues to be raised and any small fixed to be deployed before actual closure date is upon us. If this is not done there is a risk that post-deployment issues are not addressed in a timely fashion.
Outstanding issues:
- PPMD Decommission – This will be done through the SSP Continuous Improvements through 16/17 (SAC059 – I9 - July) and 17/18.