Seattle Colleges Gear Up for February 22 Go-Live

The ctcLink Steering Committee met yesterday with Seattle Colleges’ leadership, project manager (PM), and executive sponsor to discuss Deployment Group 4-B (DG4-B) — North Seattle College, Seattle Central College, South Seattle College, Seattle Colleges District — readiness for ctcLink go-live.

Daniel Cordas, ctcLink PM for Seattle Colleges, gave an overview of key go-live readiness areas for the colleges, followed by a high-level perspective from Dr. Kurt Buttleman, Seattle Colleges ctcLink Executive Sponsor.

Dr. Shouan Pan, Seattle Colleges chancellor, said they are feeling confident and have a great team working on ctcLink go-live, yet are being realistic that one can't expect perfection with this size and type of major transition. In particular, Pan said Cordas has done a fantastic job as PM and has earned a few gray hairs. 

In addition, the Steering Committee considered the ctcLink Project team’s readiness for DG4-B conversion and the SBCTC ctcLink Customer Support organization’s readiness to support DG4-B colleges post-go-live. (See the ctcLink DG4-B Go-Live Readiness Presentation for details.)

After reviewing the readiness results, the ctcLink Steering Committee unanimously approved DG4-B go-live for Feb. 22, 2021.

Over the past two years, all DG4 colleges have prepared and worked together to prepare for ctcLink go-live. Due to the large amount of data and short timeframe (i.e. one weekend) in which the HP-Legacy-to-ctcLink-PeopleSoft conversion must occur, the fourth deployment group was split into two subgroups: DG4-A and DG4-B. 

A remote challenge

Like their DG4-A partners in preparing to go live with ctcLink, Seattle Colleges have performed a seemingly impossible task these last several months: running a go-live process in fully remote mode.  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.

Kudos to leadership and teams

• Seattle Colleges subject matter experts (SMEs), district-wide and college leads, to name just a few of the critically important staffers: 
  • Derreck Pressley, Campus Solutions Pillar Lead; Mark Baumann, Campus Solutions Data Specialist; Terri Plischke, Finance Pillar Lead; Fleda Ramos and Linh Tang, Security Leads; Jessica Wagner, HCM Pillar Lead; D Lee, Testing Lead; Andrew Svec, Communication Lead.
  • College Deployment Leads: AK Sterling, Central; Brian Palmer, North; Alison Pugh, South.
  • Faculty Leads: Robert Natoli, Central; Bill Holt, North; Doug Rupik, South.
• DG4-B project manager — Daniel Cordas, Seattle Colleges ctcLink PM, is commended for his extraordinary leadership and coordination efforts to lead Seattle’s ctcLink campus team members through countless complex (and ever-changing) activities to prepare their large district for go-live.
• DG4-B executive sponsors — Kurt Buttleman, Seattle Colleges Executive Sponsor, for his consistent guidance and steadfast support of the colleges’ PM, as well as collaboration through the governance process.
• College leaders — Dr. Shouan Pan, Seattle Colleges chancellor; Dr. Chemene Crawford, North Seattle College interim president; Dr. Sheila Edwards Lange, Seattle Central College president; Dr. Rosie Rimando-Chareunsap, South Seattle 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?

On Thursday, Jan. 28, college subject matter experts (SMEs) from both DG4-A and DG4-B have an opportunity to participate in a validation activity using data from the mock Cycle 5 dry run.

This will mimic validation activities planned for the go-live weekends (Sunday, Feb. 7, and Sunday, Feb. 21) and give everyone involved a chance to familiarize themselves with the processes, confirm everything looks as it should, as well as catch and address any issues uncovered during the dry run validation.  

DG4-B conversion go-live weekend

Beginning Thursday night, Feb. 18, through Sunday, Feb. 21, the SBCTC teams will work together around-the-clock to convert DG4-B data from the HP Legacy system to ctcLink PeopleSoft.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, Seattle Colleges will be live in ctcLink PeopleSoft on Monday, Feb. 22, 2021.

ctcLink offline for all during conversion weekend

From Friday, Feb. 19, at 3 p.m. until Monday, Feb. 22, at 8 a.m. ctcLink will be off-line for all colleges currently live in ctcLink — Cascadia College, Centralia College, Clark College, Community Colleges of Spokane District, Edmonds College, Highline College, 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, Wenatchee Valley College — to allow Seattle Colleges’ data to be converted into ctcLink.

For DG4-B, ctcLink (the production environment) will come down Friday, Feb. 19, at 3 p.m. and the system will be brought back up Monday, Feb. 22, by 8 a.m. The production takedown will include all PeopleSoft pillars: Campus Solutions, Human Capital Management, and Finance.