Next Deployment Group Gears Up for May 11 Go-Live

The ctcLink Steering Committee met Tuesday with Deployment Group 3 (DG3-B) — Cascadia College, Peninsula College and Pierce College — project managers (PMs) and college leadership to discuss readiness for a May 11, 2020 ctcLink go-live.

The group reviewed key go-live readiness areas for each DG3-B college, as well as the ctcLink Project team’s readiness for DG3-B conversion and the SBCTC ctcLink Customer Support organization’s readiness to support DG3-B colleges post-go-live.

Each college PM gave an overview of readiness for their college, followed by a high-level perspective from each executive sponsor/president. See DG3-B Go/No-Go Readiness Presentation for details.

After reviewing the readiness results, the ctcLink Steering Committee unanimously approved DG3-B go-live for May 11, 2020.

A remote challenge

Even in the best of circumstances, the weeks leading up to a go-live are historically the most stressful of any deployment group implementation.

Under the current stay-at-home orders, college and SBCTC teams were presented a seemingly impossible task these last few weeks: running a go-live process in fully remote mode.

Instead, everyone joined forces — virtually — to tackle go-live activities with a fully-remote workforce, conducting complex business activities and meetings with Webex and Zoom under less-than-ideal circumstances.

From makeshift home offices, sharing kitchen tables with their families — some working on borrowed laptops without essential built-in cameras and audio — and spotty internet connections, the college and SBCTC employees pulled off a never-before-attempted feat.

Kudos to leadership and teams

• DG3-B project managers — Paula Henson-Williams, Pierce College; Pauline Marvin, Peninsula College; and Scott McKean, Cascadia College — for their extraordinary leadership and extra effort to sustain their ctcLink campus team members through an unprecedented remote process.
• DG3-B executive sponsors — Choi Halladay, Pierce; Carie Edmiston, Peninsula; and Eric Murray, Cascadia — for their steadfast support of their college PMs, as well as collaboration through the governance process.
• College leaders — Eric Murray, Cascadia College president; Luke Robins, Peninsula College president; and Michele Johnson, Pierce College chancellor — for their vision and understanding that an implementation of this size is a monumental system-wide endeavor.
• DG3-A PMs — Rich Lunden, Olympic College, and Nichole Seroshek, Lower Columbia Colleges — without whom, the ctcLink Project would have been unable to move forward with DG3-B. Olympic and Lower Columbia went live on ctcLink the week of March 9 for key employees. By the time students were brought onto the system two weeks later, the colleges had shifted its classes and college business operations fully online.
• The ctcLink Project technical and functional implementation team, SBCTC agency teams (Customer Support, Legacy, Application Services, Data Services and Infrastructure Services) have stepped up in these very difficult times to provide stellar support and coordination and keep the project moving forward.  

What’s next?

The ctcLink project team is performing dry run (mock conversion) activities this week.

On Friday, April 24, the DG3-B college subject matter experts (SMEs) will participate in a validation session based on the mock conversion. This will mimic the activities during go-live weekend and give everyone involved a chance to get familiar with the processes as well as catch and fix any glitches along the way.

Beginning Thursday night, May 7, through Sunday, May 10, the SBCTC teams will work together around-the-clock to convert DG3-B data from the HP Legacy system to ctcLink PeopleSoft.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, Cascadia, Peninsula and Pierce colleges will go live in ctcLink PeopleSoft on Monday, May 11, 2020.