Completion Report

Project Summary:

The project successfully delivered all of the following Timetabling components:

• Completed the first Roll Forward of the Timetabling system including a change to the Teaching Weeks to align the database with the Academic Calendar
• Completed the first Roll Forward of the Timetabling Web Applications including the introduction of mechanism to allowing switching between Academic Year applications
• Introduced a static URL for each of the Web Applications allowing downstream systems to refer to a single URL rather than needing to be updated each Academic Year
• Changed over MyEd and EUCLID to the static URLs to ensure users are directed to the current Academic Year's Application
• Executing a switchover of Web Applications using the mechanisms introduced above
• Completed changes to EUCLID to remove duplicate Timetabling data from the DRPS and CCAM and introduced direct links to Live Timetabling data
• Completed changes to EUCLID CCAM to remove the need to collect Timetabling information as part of a course proposal
• Completed changes to EUCLID VIsiting Student Admissions to allow applicants to access Live Timetabling data
• Delivered a new interface to bring Programme of Study information from EUCLID into Timetabling for use in Curriculum Planning
• Delivered a new interface to bring Student and Student Course Enrolment information from EUCLID into TImetabling for use in Student Allocation (with an aim for it be used in producing a student personalised timetable)
• Enhanced the interfaces delivered above to move towards change based processing allowing the interfaces to run more frequently with less load of information (i.e. not loading all information everyday, only the change every 15 minutes)

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 225 days

Staff Usage Actual: 543 days

Staff Usage Variance: 141%

Other Resource Estimate: 0 days

Other Resource Actual: 0 days

Other Resource Variance: 0%

Explanation for variance:

• Limitations for Syllabus Plus Data Adaptor (SPDA) resulted in The University having to build a more complex transfer mechanism than intended in order to meet the goal of bringing in Student Course Enrolments every 15 minutes
• The original estimates for the EUCLID work were extremely optimistic and increse substaintially throughout the build stage
• Conflicts for resources lead to longer lead times on completing work and reduction in effectiveness (i.e. getting back up to speed before tackling work)
• Post Go Live there were severe problems with stability of Syllabus Plus itself during the start of term, leading to investigation work, the recovery team being established which persisted for several months included trialing solutions from Scientia and Infrastructure

Key Learning Points:

• When problems were encountered the project team tried to resolve these by changing design and re-working code to make tools that aren't fit for purpose deliver what was required.  It would have been better to have stopped on some occasion and re-evaluate the position, however, at the time the pressure was to make this work as it was critical to delivering student personalised timetables
• Time was invested in proving that tools provided didn't meet the load requirements, this lead to several long investigations and trial and error approach from the supplier in order to investigate problems they hadn't experienced before.  In future it would be better to push this work back to the supplier, a new working group has been established to promote better ties between UoE and the supplier at a management level to assist in working better together and sharing our experience with them.
• Running multiple workstreams at the same time did cause problems where the same resources were required in them all, leading to bottlenecks and overloading of individuals, ideally work should be more distrubuted to allow knowledge transfer.

Outstanding issues:

 The project failed to deliver the following Timetabling Componets:

• MVM Room Booking interface - this was a low priority deliverable following the opting out of MVM from use of the Timetabling system.  Given the various priorities and overrun in the project this work was never initiated in full under this project - The MVM integration has been passed onto a future project within the Timetabling Project (TTU004)
• Timetab Replacement - This Scientia deliverable was never fully implemented due to issue with the performance of the grid layout view of combined courses.  The project delivered a more refined list view of combined courses which does supply the raw information for combinations of courses, but it does not fully meet the needs of Students and Personal Tutor - unfortunately the required grid view was not sufficiently performant to allow it be deployed.  Work is ongoing with Scientia to deliver a finalised product

During Semester 1 of 2013/14 a number of Timetabling Performance and Stability issues were encountered, this project took on the responsiblity for stabilising the system given that the main instabillty was suspected to be due to the volume of information being transferred regularly into the Timetabling system, the following work was completed, however, there are still coping mechanisms - which ideally should be removed as more stable compoents are put into place:

• A Recovery Team across Scientia and The University was established to investigate the stability problems
• Changes were made to the underlying architecture of the virtual machines Timetabling is running on to remove a connection issue that was causing Web Applications to fail to update
• The incoming interfaces was reduced in frequency, turned off for a time and manual processes implemented to keep information up to date, these have subsequently been re-introduced on a run daily basis and are stable
• The bulk allocation process for allocating students to recieve their personalised Student Timetable has been streamlined to reduce the amount of churn in student data which was causing some Web Applications to become slow to update and ultimately fail
• Numerous changes have been made to the settings within the Scientia applications to ensure stability (for example the amount of memory allocated to a web application has been increased to allow better performance)

The Recovery Team has stood down following the restoration of stability to the Timetabling software, however, the coping measure as just that and further deliveries from Scientia are required to ensure stability during Semester 1 2014/15:

• Upgrade to the latest version of Enterprise and Classic to protect against some function 9 errors that corrupt the core data (TTU002)
• Reduce the amount of data being presented in the transfer tables (TTU005)
• Potential to automate Bulk Allocation (TTU005)

Some deliverables were not achieved from the Original Scope, some are being taken forward by projects in 13/14 and others have been descoped, these are:

• MVM room booking interface (moved to TTU004 but subsequently withdrawn)
• Timetab Replacement (Scienita product failed load testing, in house development proceeding under TTU005)
• Kx Link - Accomodation Services Link (awaiting new release from Scientia - Descoped from 13/14 projects)