Deployment Group 2 Moving Forward
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Deployment Group 2 Highlights
Deployment Group 2 (DG2) ̶ which kicked off back in May with GDR sessions ̶ is currently in the Structure phase, focused on Business Process Fit/Gap (BPFG) sessions, local fit/gap, and prep work for conversion activities.
DG2 participants have recommended an October 2019 go-live date as a best fit for existing business activities and college calendars.
DG2 work is progressing on schedule. Analysis is underway to examine the possible resource challenges due to overlapping activities between DG2 and Deployment Group 3 (DG3).
Deployment Group 2 members
- Clark College – initial implementation
- SBCTC – initial implementation
- Spokane District – PeopleSoft upgrade
- Tacoma Community College – PeopleSoft upgrade
ctcLink on Legislative Work Session Docket
The House State Government, Elections & Information Technology Committee, chaired by Rep. Zack Hudgins, heard a ctcLink status update during its recent work session.
Watch on TVW: Work Session: Status of state information technology projects
Grant Rodeheaver, SBCTC’s new deputy executive director for information technology, introduced the panel and himself in his new role.
Christy Campbell, ctcLink project director, presented a brief overview of the project timeline from its 2008 start.
Campbell, who joined SBCTC in June 2017, described how the project went into an extensive remediation phase to regroup and plan a way forward after the bankruptcy of the project’s implementation partner in late 2016.
While remediation was “signed off” in December 2017, she reminded the committee that remediation is ongoing at the pilot colleges (Tacoma Community College and Community Colleges of Spokane). The sign-off allowed the project to begin work on the next deployments. An example of a remediation effort is the Chart of Accounts, necessary for colleges to balance their general ledgers.
She highlighted the project restart efforts which include new foundation project management principles, a new investment plan, new governance model, new ctcLink methodology (which includes organizational change management, training and testing approach, communication plan), new security model and more.
“We’ve changed our approach,” Campbell said. “Instead of the project happening ‘to’ [the colleges] we became ‘partners’ in the delivery of this project. We are now working collaboratively in partnership.”
She gave an overview of Deployment Group 2 timeline and noted there is significant activity colleges must undertake to get ready to begin the implementation activities.
Joyce Loveday, Clover Park Technical College president and co-chair of the ctcLink Executive Leadership Committee (cELC), described the change in project governance. In the prior model, governance was handled from the presidents’ technology committee.
She explained that the new model includes an executive leadership committee, project steering committee and project working group; each with varying degrees of decision-making authority.
“Things truly have turned around and the level of confidence … is there,” Loveday said.
For example, the 34 college presidents unanimously voted to support the creation of common processes. Subject matter experts come together to develop new processes and practices together, which instills confidence and a sense of ownership throughout the system.
“Even though we know there is still work and challenges, there is a sense of readiness,” she said, noting that more colleges than could be supported wanted to participate in the next major deployment.
Quick Takes
Highlights from recent ctcLink project workstream status reports:
- Recommendations from Global Design Review (GDR) sessions and previous Common Process Workshops (CPWs) have gone before governance for approval.
- Faculty Workload Management and Human Capital Management (HCM) Self-Service CPWs are set for July and August.
- DG2 colleges are working on, submitting and refining Local Configuration homework assignments in conjunction with the BPFG Sessions.
- The project team will coordinate directly with a third party vendor to apply PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 Update Image 26 to project environments as soon as possible.
- To ensure that earlier efforts invested by Wave 1 colleges (Clark, Columbia Basin, Green River, Lower Columbia, Peninsula, Pierce, SBCTC) aren’t lost, their initial PeopleSoft configurations were migrated to the “configuration build” environment for functional testing. Additional configurations from homework assignments will be added to that testing environment and functionally-tested concurrent with BPFG activities for each deployment group.
