Summary of SITS Development Progress: 03 Sep 2013

List Source Development Stage Status1 Steering Group PBI and Enrolment Design & Build GREEN2 Steering Group Paperless Registry Requirements AMBER3 Steering Group Results Processing & Reporting Closed Down COMPLETE4 Steering Group Student Information Reports Requirements AMBER5 Steering Group Module Registration Enhancements Not Started

6&7 Steering GroupOnline Admissions Process Improvement(including Associate Student Module Pre-Selection) Not Started

8 Steering Group Enterprise Service Desk Initiation GREEN9 Steering Group Online Process to Support PGR Examinations Initiation AMBER

10 Steering Group Mark Entry & Undo Process Not Started 11 Steering Group Student Fund Management Not Started 12 ITS SITS Upgrade & Migration Initiation AMBER13 ARCS PAC Rules Design & Build GREEN

IT PROJECTS

Proceed with the build of the MySIS visa monitoring task

The Home Office and the UKBA can change aspects of Points Based Immigration with very little warning and time to implement and test the necessary changes

The developments will support compliance requirements for the issuing of CAS and tracking students.

Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME On Target

COST

SCOPE On Target

Budget Spend to Date

BAU

1 - PBI and Enrolment – Lynne Campbell

Executive Summary

Supports compliance with the Home Office for issuing CAS and reporting students to the Home Office, with better data and applicant/student management.

Benefits Summary

Achievements so far

Project Milestone Tracker

Milestone Due date RAG

Pre- and re-enrolment roll out to live system 16/08/2013 G

Staff enrolment task go live 14/09/2013 G

Visa monitoring task UAT 14/10/2013 G

Visa monitoring task go live 28/10/2013 G

Full completion of current requirements December 2013 G

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period

Amendments have been made to the staff enrolment, the pre-enrolment and re-enrolment tasksThe pre- and re-enrolment tasks were made live in mid-August and are currently being used by studentsFinal amendments made to staff enrolment task following testing at the end of last weekWork is progressing on a MySIS task to manage/monitor in country visa applications and student reporting requirements

Initiation

IT PROJECTS

A review was carried out of existing processes. The first paperless registry forum was convened. A Proof of Concept development demonstrating an online withdrawal process was presented and well received.

Meet with departmental representatives to map what each department's current process is.Record how the current status change processes update tables.

Understanding the variety of unique processes for each department and finding an acceptable common ground may affect the timeline for requirement definition and specification. This would impact on the delivery date and budget.

Students wanting to change their study status, i.e. change programme, interrupt studies or withdraw, must do so by submitting a request on paper to their department. Once the request has been approved by a departmental representative, the form is passed to the Academic Registry Office for processing. This project's aim is to replace the paper-based process with an online process using the Student Information System's web-portal, MySIS.

Initiation Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME Under review

COST Under review

SCOPE On Target

Budget £ 30,469 Spend to Date

ACTUAL SPEND £11,454

FORECAST SPEND

COMMITTED £30,469

2 - Paperless Registry - Brendan Hewitt

Executive Summary

There is scope to increase efficiency and improve student satisfaction, the extent of which can only be quantified at the end of the requirements analysis. Possible increase in retention owing to early warnings.

Benefits SummaryAchievements so far

Project Milestone Tracker

Milestone Due date RAG

Requirement Sign-Off A

Phase 1: Withdrawal Task A

Phase 2: Interruption Task R

Phase 3: Programme Change Task R

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period

IT PROJECTS

A development was put into place before this year’s results release period which emailed students with their provisional and confirmed results respectively.

None – project has now closed but will be subject to review and continuous service improvement.

N/A

Problems occurred last year around the results release period whereby hundreds of students attempted to log into MySIS to view their results. The system struggled with the increase in demand and a need to communicate this information to students more efficiently was identified.

Initiation Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME Complete

COST Complete

SCOPE Complete

Budget BAU Spend to Date

ACTUAL SPEND £

FORECAST SPEND £

COMMITTED £

3 – Results Processing & Reporting – Brendan Hewitt

Executive Summary

Improve and standardise the viewing of resultsProvide breakdown of previous year’s results Provide the ability to e-mail results to students thus reducing excessive load on SITS when exams results are published

Benefits Summary

Achievements so far

Project Milestone Tracker

Milestone Due date RAG

Complete G

G

G

G

G

G

G

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period

IT PROJECTS

The prioritised list of developments have been received and appropriate people within ARCS identified as the contacts for exact requirements and criteria. It has been identified which reports will be produced by the SITS team, the Development Team and which will be delivered by the new Reporting Services tool.Reporting and BI team now appointed within ITSDevelopments made have increased exam board report performance by a factor of 10 since last year.

The ARCS contacts identified as the report owners will be contacted and a more detailed specification will be agreed upon. SQL development work will begin on producing the raw data sets and discussions will be had about the best way of delivering this information via self-service mechanisms

The new college BI tool will not be ready for use for a number of months and newly appointed members of the Development Team may require training to use the enterprise reporting tool.

In the event of the new Reporting Services tool being delayed, it is possible to use the current bespoke in-house report delivery vehicle managed by the Development Team

Improved access to information for staff and students.

Initiation Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME BAU

COST

SCOPE

Budget BAU Spend to Date

ACTUAL SPEND £

FORECAST SPEND £

COMMITTED £

4 – Student Information Reports – Jason Bunning

Executive Summary

Module Choice / Confirmation / Assessment ReportImproved SEB and DEB ReportsProvisional Board Report Finalist Awards Report Emailing advisees Student Self-Serve Reports View Student Module Results ReportDisplaying year averages in transcripts Viewing student resits by student as well as by module Council Tax Exemption Notification View enrolment by Dept / Scheme

Benefits Summary

Achievements so far

Project Milestone Tracker

Milestone Due date RAG

Schedule of work September 2013 A

Phase 1: SITS Developments Dependent on above G

Phase 2: Reporting Service Developments Dependent on above G

G

G

G

G

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period

IT PROJECTS

Prepared Executive PID. Liaised with TRIBAL regarding specifics on the project deliverables and timelines. Agreed a discount of ~£2.5k if we commit by 27 th September.

ESD proposal to be made to the Student Systems Steering Group for assessment. If agreed, a PO will be raised with TRIBAL and escalated through the procurement process.

We have been offered a discount on the new software and consultancy work which will expire by the 27th September. Procurement costs will increase if a commitment is not made in sufficient time. This proposal will be submitted to the Student Systems Steering Group on the 5th September and then to the Technical Design Authority. To address the deadlines, this proposal will be escalated through the procurement process.

As this is a hosted solution and one which requires consultancy, our timelines are dependent on the resource availabilities within TRIBAL. This is outside of our control.

Main DeliverablesTo deliver a student focused electronic service desk where enquiries and requests for information can be submitted 24/7

To provide a repository of information to prospective and current students to assist in any enquiries

To monitor service level agreements are being met and enhance the student experience

Initiation Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME On Target

COST On Target

SCOPE On Target

Budget £50k Spend to Date

ACTUAL SPEND £

FORECAST SPEND £47k + £3k con.

COMMITTED £

8 - Enterprise Service Desk – Jason Bunning

Executive Summary

Ability to gather enquiries and have them automatically logged and allocated to relevant department/team leader. Any file attachments will be uploaded to the new enquiryEmail responses containing an enquiry number automatically added to the enquiry historySupport telephone and email bookings and enquiriesProvide greater electronic interaction with target groups Allows prospective students to make enquiries via the web, upload documents, track progress to resolution, and communicate with helpdesk staffEnquiries automatically allocated to the appropriate team based on enquiry categoriesAutomatic creation of service level agreements support student experienceA searchable database repository for common enquiries or recurring issues.Standardised approach to service deliveryMetrics / management reports to identify most common enquiries, letter requests, meeting of service level agreements, etc.

Benefits Summary

Achievements this week

Project Milestone Tracker

Milestone Due date RAG

Procurement 27 September G

Phase One – Kick Off Mid-October G

Phase Two – Initial Configuration Early November G

Phase Three – Process Definition End November G

Phase Four – Testing Mid December G

Phase Five – Training and Move to Go Live Early January G

Go Live and handover to the production team Mid January G

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period

IT PROJECTS

ITS have provided a sandbox environment running SITS 8.5.1 on Oracle 11g. The team have been using this development environment and have identified some issues with the database upgrade which are being resolved. A project plan has been produced which details the steps and timelines needed. QM’s two data centres are now online and able to host the various SITS environments

ITS will provide the various 8.6.0 and 8.6.1 environments to allow the Student Systems team to begin analysing the software upgrades. UAT testing by ARCS for 8.6.0 is due to commence in November following the oncoming busy business period.

It has been reported that our current physical production database is running out of disk space, which can not be expanded owing to limitations with the hardware. Should the migration and upgrade project become delayed, there is a real risk that our current live system may run into difficulties with insufficient storage capacity. A solution to this would be to truncate some of the major logging tables on the database.

Annual upgrade of SITS software necessary for continued vendor supportUpgrade of Oracle database from 10g to 11gMigration of systems to DC1 & DC2 in keeping with the ITS Service Change Programme

Initiation Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME

COST

SCOPE

Budget BAU Spend to Date

ACTUAL SPEND £

FORECAST SPEND £

COMMITTED £

12 – SITS Upgrade & Migration – Jason Bunning

Executive Summary

Greater resilienceEfficient Disaster recovery processesIncrease in performance from a user perspectiveAbility to quickly add extra resources/servers during times of heavy loadEasier systems administrationOverall cost reduction in hardware and support

Benefits Summary

Achievements so far

Project Milestone Tracker

Milestone Due date RAG

Delivery of a 8.6.0 environment for SITS testing 01 Sep 2013 A

ARCS to commence 8.6.0 UAT 04 Nov 2013 G

Upgrade SITS production to 8.6.0 19 Jan 2014 G

Target production VM environments delivered 31 Jan 2014 G

ARCS to commence 8.6.1 UAT 01 Mar 2014 G

ITS to sign off interface testing 1 Apr 2014 G

Live VM Upgrade to 8.6.1 28 April 2014 G

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period

IT PROJECTS

•A significant number of rules have been changed for consistency•The new awards “MSc Gastro” and “MSc Marine Ecology” were defined•Late Summer progression rules for Law built.•Commenced planning ‘weighted’ average calculations.

• Focus on completing ‘weighted’ average calculations.

•Only one expert in this particular area.•Non-completion would mean students cannot be progressed and/or awarded automatically. In this event, records could be manually updated.

Progression, Award and Classification (PAC) Rules

Concerns were raised by External Examiners about the lack of equity in progression, award and classification criteria. The Quality and Assurance Agency has also been critical to such practices in the sector, and for these reasons a Task and Finishing Group was established by Senate to make recommendations for the harmonisation of QM Regulations. This project’s main objective is to model the changes to the academic regulations in the Student Information System, SITS:Vision.

Initiation Requirements Test Implement Design & Build Closed down

Tolerance Status

TIME On target

COST

SCOPE On Target

Budget N/A Spend to Date

BAU

13 - PAC Rules - Elaine Ellul

Executive Summary

•This will standardise the progression and award rules, which will simplify the maintenance required annually.•Equity for students across programmes within the same schema, e.g. UG programmes•Knowledge transfer to ARCS to address single points of dependency

Benefits Summary

Achievements so far

Project Milestone TrackerMilestone Due date RAG

Define coding strategy 23/07/2013 Complete

Weighted Average Rule 27/09/2013 G

Handover of knowledge to ARCS Dec 2013 G

Risks and Issues (with mitigation)

Activities planned for next period