Closure Review
Project Summary:
Project Review
Objectives, Scope and Deliverables
The project objectives, scope and deliverables as defined in the project brief were as follows:
Overview
Year One of a Cross-system solution for personalised notifications and emergency communications. The new service will enable notifications to be created-by and distributed-across multiple University systems, and is intended to provide an enterprise-scale publish/subscribe model for applications and services to communicate electronically with people.
This will allow users to received notifications from key services in a unified way, and optionally allow the people being communicated with to choose the medium in which they are contacted.
Year One will produce a working prototype demonstrating core functionality of the proposed service. This will enable meaningful engagement with potential stakeholders to build a critical mass of partners for years two and three of the project. Engagement at this stage will inform requirements as this transitions from prototype to pilot, then to production ready platform, in years two and three.
The backbone is expected to require:
- High throughput of notification message handling
- Appropriate security mechanisms to ensure the security and SSL encryption of notifications
- A User Interface to allow messaging support and administration of publishers and subscribers
- Audit of messaging to ensure whether messages have been sent
- The ability to publish a single notification to multiple subscribers
Background
Currently, there is no standard system for handling notifications to users. Most systems communicate via email using the University of Edinburgh bulk mail relay.
Individual systems may also display notifications directly to users from within their own User Interface.
Scope
The first year of the project will deliver a prototype notifications platform to demonstrate the feasibility of a central notifications backbone architecture. The outcome will be an “Alpha” standard prototype and is not planned for introduction to a live environment.
Year One will deliver:
Prototype core notifications backbone
- A basic UI to enable publishing of emergency notifications.
- “Hooks” to enable integration with publisher services.
- Notifications via MyEd.
- Subscriber API for consuming notifications.
- Recommendations for Year Two, based on use of the prototype on DEV and TEST environments.
Year One will not deliver:
- A User Interface (except for a rudimentary UI to enable prototype setup and testing).
- Connections to more than 1-2 publisher services.
- A production ready prototype.
- Notifications via mechanisms other than the prototype subscriber API.
Objectives, Deliverables, Benefits, Success Criteria
Objective | Deliverables | Success Criteria | Benefits | Priority | Project Closure Review - Delivered? |
1. Cross-system solution for personalised notification and emergency communications.
|
| 1.1 Sufficient core functionality delivered to demonstrate end to end process for sending notifications from a Publisher service to a user via MyEd.
1.2 Pull service delivered for a single Publisher service (either db connector or web service connector).
1.3 Push notifications are successfully processed by Oracle SOA.
1.4 Capability to deliver a notification to a specific user via the subscriber API.
1.5 User is able to customise their preferences for different notification types via MyEd. | 1.1 Improved management information due to better potential for tracking success of communications and audit receipt of communications.
1.2 see 1.1
1.3 “Out of the box” message resilience and support for automated message retry.
1.4 Better-targeted and more-personalised communication with students and staff.
1.5 Improved satisfaction with University communications.
| 1.1 Must Have
1.2 Must Have
1.3 Could Have
1.4 Must Have
1.5 Won't Have | 1.1 Yes 1.2 Yes (Learn) 1.3 No (de-scoped) 1.4 Yes
|
2. Improved Student experience | 2.1 Capability to deliver cross-media communication in the case of emergencies. (NB emergency notifications will be delivered via MyEd as proof of concept).
| 2.1 Higher completion rates for key online tasks and activities. Reduced number of system emails. Reduced number of unread emails in (student) inboxes. Shorter completions times for online tasks and activities. |
2.1 Reduced support costs due to fewer support incidents relating to online task completion. |
2.1 Should Have
| 2.1 No (note that this will be delivered in the follow-on WEB010 project. |
Schedule
The project did not keep to the planned schedule. The original plan was to deliver the project in financial year 2014/15, however due to business priorities on other projects, WEB007 was replanned shortly after the brief was approved and planned to complete in financial year 2015/16:
Milestones to be completed in 2014-15: Business Analysis Sign Off 03/07/15 (was 01/05/15) System Design Sign Off 24/07/15 (was 15/05/15)
Milestones moved into 2015-16: Build Sign Off Integration Sign Off (29 Jan 2016) Acceptance Sign Off (22 Apr 2016) Close 03/05/16 (was 31/07/15)
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 95 days
Staff Usage Actual: 113 days
Staff Usage Variance: 19%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
- PICCL4 notes that the project estimate was reduced by 20 days, with the effort tansferred to the higher priority WEB008, which needed the additional days to complete the project.
- PICCL6 then increased the project estimate to 106 days due to issues encountered with the O365 connection.
Key Learning Points:
Feedback from Lead Developer:
"Lessons learned I think the project suffered from a non-dedicated team, irregular meetups/comms (everyone was busy), but I’m happy with what we delivered, it is a solid foundation to go into the next project."
Feedback from Senior Supplier:
"Just to note, I didn't feel very involved as senior supplier on this project. I intend to be more involved with WEB010."
Programme Manager commentary:
The follow-on WEB010 project aims to improve the student experience with university IT services, and is seen as an important project by senior staff in ISG including the Information Services CIO. We have a project team in place for WEB010 which will address the points noted above.
Outstanding issues:
There are no outstanding issues to note. The follow-on project (WEB010) to implement the notifications service to production is now in progress and scheduled to deliver in September 2016.