Deployment Group 6 Colleges Kick Off ctcLink Activities
About 375 ctcLink Deployment Group 6 (DG6) project managers (PMs), subject matter experts (SMEs), college executive sponsors, college leaders, and ctcLink Project team members gathered online today for the official DG6 ctcLink Kickoff.
This event marked the completion of the group’s 18-month Initiation Phase activities (which began March 2019) and entry into the Structure Phase. This phase marks the beginning of college-wide activities leading to ctcLink implementation in Winter 2022.
At nine colleges — Bates Technical College, Clover Park Technical College, Columbia Basin College, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, Renton Technical College, Shoreline Community College, South Puget Sound Community College, Walla Walla Community College, Yakima Valley College — DG6 is the largest (and final) ctcLink deployment group. And with four technical colleges, it is the most varied deployment group to date.
Given the current stay-at-home order and recent travel restrictions, key activities formerly held in-person are now being conducted 100% remotely, inspiring the colleges and the ctcLink Project team to work and communicate in entirely 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.
DG6 members engaged in PeopleSoft Fundamentals in August to better understand the global framework of PeopleSoft and to prepare for the Business Process Fit/Gap sessions.
In November, the DG6 PMs will also begin 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 ctcLink PeopleSoft). This prerequisite to the BPFGs begins Oct. 20 and will be open until SMEs are ready to begin engaging with their specific BPFG sessions.
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. A limited number of Campus Solutions Core BPFG sessions will begin in January 2021. All pillar BPFG sessions will end in May 2021, with configuration homework assignments due later in Spring 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. Colleges are involved in four cycles (numbers 2 though 5), beginning with the first one in April 2021 and concluding in September 2021, with a mock test run in January 2022.
Validate
College SMEs are involved in rounds of data validation after each conversion cycle.
