DG6 Begins Business Process Fit/Gap, the Key to a Good Conversion

The sixth and final ctcLink deployment group, DG6, is preparing to begin its Business Process Fit/Gap (BPFG) sessions.

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, and Yakima Valley College — DG6 is the largest deployment group.

The primary goal of BPFGs is to gather local ctcLink configuration information, which tells Legacy data how to convert to its new home in ctcLink.

The BPFG is a foundational step in the configuration process and a substantial effort for both the colleges and the ctcLink project team as they partner toward go-live.

As Lisa Chamberlin, ctcLink Project Manager for Walla Walla Community College, said, “Folks are happy to see a little bit more detail of this ‘mystery thing’ we have been talking about for years and years and years.”

What happens during Business Process Fit/Gaps?

The primary goal of BPFGs is to gather local ctcLink configuration information from each college.

To provide the information, subject matter experts (SMEs) will attend sessions led by project team members, which will help SMEs compare their current business processes in the Legacy system (which colleges mapped out during their Initiation phase work) with functionality available in ctcLink PeopleSoft.

The BPFG homework each college submits to the ctcLink Project Team will inform how the local ctcLink configuration is set up to support its business processes.

By understanding their local Legacy business processes — and the ctcLink configurations associated with them — they can also incorporate the differences between Legacy and ctcLink into their college’s Change Impact Analysis and Change Action Plans.

What’s Next?

• The BPFG effort kicked off today, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, with an orientation for DG6 college ctcLink Project Managers and some SMEs.
• Two BPFG sessions for Campus Solutions business processes — Student Bio/Demographic and the Admissions and Recruiting — will be held January 2021.
• A repeat orientation for all pillar SMEs is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, to get ready for the remaining sessions which will begin in March 2021 and conclude by the end of May 2021. (The February pause allows the ctcLink Project team to focus on DG4 go-live activities.)

DG6 colleges also continue to complete Global Design Adoption (GDA) courses that prepare the project managers, pillar leads, subject matter experts, and other power users for BPFG sessions and homework. The GDA courses allow new users to learn which configurations are “global” as they prepare to make “local” configuration decisions during the BPFG sessions.