Deployment Group 5 ctcLink Efforts Underway
Deployment Group 5 (DG5) project managers (PMs), subject matter experts (SMEs), college executive sponsors, and other college leaders gathered online recently for the official DG5 ctcLink Kickoff.
At eight colleges — Bellevue College, Bellingham Technical College, Big Bend Community College, Everett Community College, Grays Harbor College, Green River College, Skagit Valley College, Whatcom Community College — DG5 is the largest deployment group yet.
This event marked the completion of the group’s Initiation Phase and entry into the Structure Phase, the beginning of activities leading DG5 to ctcLink implementation in October 2021.
Given the current stay-at-home order and recent travel restrictions, key activities formerly held in-person are now being conducted 100% remotely, challenging this deployment group and the ctcLink Project team to communicate and work in new ways.
Key Structure Phase Activities
The college SMEs and PMs have begun the demanding work of gaining a solid understanding of PeopleSoft business processes, planning for major changes that come with PeopleSoft adoption, and building their new system in earnest.
DG5 members enrolled in PeopleSoft Fundamentals and Global Design Adoption courses to better understand the global framework of PeopleSoft and to prepare for the Business Process Fit/Gap sessions beginning in August.
DG5 PMs have also begun to report their college’s status for the compiled ctcLink Project Status Reports.
Global Design Adoption Courses
College SMEs get familiar with global design (the settings, fields and functions common across the ctcLink PeopleSoft. This prerequisite to the BPFGs began in late May and will run through late July 2020. Schedules and timelines are subject to revision.
Business Process Fit/Gap (BPFG)
The primary goal of the BPFGs is to gather local ctcLink configuration information for each college. To do that, college SMEs first need to understand how the ctcLink PeopleSoft system supports their college business processes (which colleges mapped out during their Initiation phase work).
By understanding their local business processes — and the ctcLink configurations associated with them — they can incorporate the differences between Legacy and ctcLink into their college’s Change Impact Analysis and Change Action Plans.
Completed configuration homework then informs the ctcLink Project and functional teams about how to configure colleges’ local settings in PeopleSoft to support its business processes. The sessions begin in mid-August, with configuration homework assignments due later in fall quarter.
Configure
Local ctcLink configuration, which tells the ctcLink Project team how to bring its local Legacy data over to ctcLink, is based on the BPFG homework colleges turn in.
Convert
ctcLink conducts five data conversion cycles, beginning with the first one in October 2020 and concluding with a mock test run in mid-September 2021.
Validate
College SMEs are involved in rounds of data validation after each conversion cycle.
