Next Deployment Group Gears Up for February 8 Go-Live

The ctcLink Steering Committee met yesterday with Deployment Group 4-A — Centralia College, Edmonds College, Highline College, Wenatchee Valley College — project managers and college leadership to discuss readiness for a Feb. 8, 2021 ctcLink go-live.

The group reviewed key go-live readiness areas for each DG4-A college. Each college PM gave an overview of readiness for their college, followed by a high-level perspective from each executive sponsor/president. See DG4-A Go/No-Go Readiness Presentation for details.

In addition, the committee considered the ctcLink Project team’s readiness for DG4-A conversion and the SBCTC ctcLink Customer Support organization’s readiness to support DG4-A colleges post-go-live.

After reviewing the readiness results, the ctcLink Steering Committee unanimously approved DG4-A go-live for Feb. 8, 2021.

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 have been presented a seemingly impossible task these last several months: running a go-live process in fully remote mode.

Instead, everyone joined forces — virtually — to tackle go-live preparation 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 an astounding feat.

Kudos to leadership and teams

• DG4-A project managers — Carrie Powell, Centralia College; Beth Farley, Edmonds College; Patricia Daniels, Highline College; and Jason Hetterle, Wenatchee Valley College) for their extraordinary leadership and extra effort to sustain their ctcLink campus team members through an unprecedented remote process. The hard work and resiliency of the colleges’ ctcLink teams is commendable.
• DG4-A executive sponsors — Bob Mohrbacher, Centralia College; Eva Smith, Edmonds College; Tim Wrye, Highline College; and Reagan Bellamy, Wenatchee Valley College — for their consistent guidance and steadfast support of their college PMs, as well as collaboration through the governance process.
• College leaders — Dr. Bob Mohrbacher, Centralia College president (who also serves as the college’s executive sponsor); Dr. Amit Singh, Edmonds College president; Dr. John Mosby, Highline College president; and Dr. Jim Richardson, Wenatchee Valley College president — for their vision and understanding that an implementation of this size is a monumental system-wide undertaking.
• 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?

All DG4-A and DG4-B colleges finished user acceptance testing and final error files were due by Friday, Jan. 8 in preparation for the Legacy data extracts on Saturday, Jan. 9.

The ctcLink project team will perform dry run (mock data conversion weekend) activities Jan. 18-20 for all DG4 colleges, including Seattle Colleges (DG4-B).

On Friday, Jan. 28, DG4-A and DG4-B college subject matter experts (SMEs), college subject matter experts (SMEs) have an opportunity to participate in a validation session using data from the dry run conversion. This will mimic the activities of the go-live weekend and give everyone involved a chance to familiarize themselves with the processes, confirm that everything looks as it should, as well as catch and fix issues uncovered during the validation.  

Conversion go-live weekend

Beginning Thursday night, Feb. 4, through Sunday, Feb. 7, the SBCTC teams will work together around-the-clock to convert DG4-A data from the HP Legacy system to ctcLink PeopleSoft.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, Centralia, Edmonds, Highline, and Wenatchee Valley colleges will be live in ctcLink PeopleSoft on Monday, Feb. 8, 2021.

ctcLink offline for all during conversion weekend

From Friday, Feb. 5, at 3 p.m. until Monday, Feb. 8, at 8 a.m. ctcLink will be off-line for all colleges currently live in ctcLink — Cascadia College, Clark College, Community Colleges of Spokane District, Lower Columbia College, Olympic College, Peninsula College, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, Pierce College Puyallup, SBCTC, Spokane Community College, Spokane Falls Community College, Tacoma Community College — to allow the new colleges’ data to be converted into ctcLink.

For DG4-A, the production environment will come down Friday, Feb. 5, at 3 p.m. and the system will be brought back up Monday, Feb. 8, by 8 a.m. The production takedown will include all pillars (CS, HCM, and FIN).

DG4-B go-live and readiness review

On Jan. 26, the ctcLink Project Steering Committee will meet to review readiness for DG4-B (North Seattle, Seattle Central and South Seattle colleges) with an anticipated go-live date of Monday, Feb. 22, 2021.