September 2022

TEL075

Polling Service Replacement

Discretionary

Milestones:

31/10 Award.

30/11 Soft Launch.

RAG Status: Red

Last Month.

• Evaluation continued and consensus has been taken to near completion.

• Evaluation has been delayed slightly as we have required staff to evaluate and attend consensus through the start of term.  Allowances have had to be made for this.

• All 4 suppliers have submitted comprehensive bids that have been within our allocated budget.

Issues.

• The project is marked as red, as currently DLAM TEL Team do not have a Service Manager available to us to roll out the new service.  DLAM are actively pursuing an increase of resources  in the team by moving people around LTW where possible and readvertising where we've been unable to fill posts.

Next Steps.

• Complete the consensus and publish the winner.
• Begin the rollout the service, subject to staffing pressures. 

Report by Colin Forrest for September 2022

 

EL077

Data Retention and GDPR Compliance

Compliance

Milestones: 

RAG Status: Red

Report by Colin Forrest for September 2022

Last Month.

• The team have moved from initial investigation of the APIs to writing the Data Retention Policies and gaining feedback from their users as per the plan.
• This part relies on resource from within the DLAM team.

Issues.

• Staff resourcing issues in the DLAM TEL Team means that project work is being deprioritised to focus on maintaining service reliability.  DLAM project work will significantly slow down.  DLAM are actively pursuing an increase of resources  in the team by moving people around LTW where possible and readvertising where we've been unable to fill posts. Increasing resources in the team by moving people around LTW where possible and readvertising where we've been unable to fill posts.
• Project development resource has not been available due to medium term absence. This is more minor than DLAM resourcing at this stage of the project.  

Next Steps.

• Finalise the Data Retention Policies before we begin design and development work again.

TEL078

Datafeed Redevelopment

Compliance

Milestones:

RAG Status:

RED

Report by David Watters for September 2022

Achievements in last period

• Reviewed Moodle analysis for comments

• Next steps on Moodle work to be discussed further

Issues

• Still waiting to make definite arrangements with PebblePad for development work (may now be in Autumn 2022)

• Business analysis documentation not yet completely signed off, thus delaying the planning for the next stages.

Next Steps

• Final walkthrough and feedback of LEARN analysis

• Plan and estimate work for 22/23

• Await agreement with PebblePad on recommended changes

 

RAG Commentary

 

Issue: The business analyst assigned to the project has had to concentrate on higher priority projects over the last few months and this has caused a delay in obtaining a final review and sign-off of the BA documentation.

Impact: We have subsequently had to push back the estimation and planning for the development work on the feeds, necessitating the revision of remaining milestones. This delay has also compounded the risks to the timeline caused by the staffing problems in the DLAM team.

Next steps: To ensure the business analysis review is conducted as soon as possible so that the project team has a good understanding of what needs to be estimated and planned next, and to pin down realistic estimates and plans for effort.

TEL079

Blackboard Collaborate - MyEd Channel Improvements

Discretionary

Milestones:

RAG Status:

RED

Report by David Watters for September 2022

Achievements

• Nothing to note this month

Issues

• No further feedback from development services after initial testing feedback
• Uncertainty around next steps and sign-off

Next Steps

• Developer should complete estimate for rework
• Updated version of channel made available for UAT
• Further testing of what is redeveloped
• Review plans for remaining steps
• Replan deployment of new channel with service team
• Suspend project until deployment

 

RAG Commentary

Issue: There has been a delay in advancing the rework and retesting the newly developed channel in TEST. This is because of competing priorities for the colleague responsible for the rework of the channel.

Impact: The immediate impact was the postponement of the planned deployment in August. The go live will now have to wait until December, but is at risk because of the resourcing difficulties in the DLAM team. There is no effect on the current service because this will continue to use the existing channel.

Next Steps: The next steps are to complete the necessary rework and retest the new channel in readiness for a future deployment in line with project team availability.

TEL080

Upgrade to Learn Ultra

Discretionary

Milestones:

RAG Status: Amber

Report by Colin Forrest for September 2022

Last Month.

• All Phase 1 integrations were delivered as planned before the change freeze kicked in.
• The start of term went smoothly for Learn Ultra users.
• An updated version of the Microsoft Team integration was released and documented.  This update include the ability for users to schedule meetings from within their Learn Ultra course.
• The Class group tools were deployed for Learn Ultra and are working as planned, splitting the Timetabling feed between Ultra and Original courses, then processing as required.
• Good progress was made on the plans for the 23/24 course rollover to Live.  The team have a proposed date for this and will take that to the implementation groups for governance.

Issues.

• Staff resourcing issues in the DLAM TEL Team means that there are periods where project work is being deprioritised to focus on maintaining service reliability.  Project work has been prioritised and Lean Ultra has been given the highest priority after maintaining service reliability within the DLAM Tel Team.  DLAM are actively pursuing an increase of resources  in the team by moving people around LTW where possible and readvertising where we've been unable to fill posts.

Next steps.

• Continue with our Phase 2 plan, this includes evaluation of Microsoft Tool such as OneNote and scheduling the development time required for Phase 2 work.  
• Set out our rollover to Live course data plans for the next academic year. 
• Prepare for the technical implementation group.

TEL082

QMP Upgrade

Compliance

Milestones:

(revised milestones to be agreed, dependent on LTW staff availability and outcome of UAT review with supplier)

RAG Status:

RED

Report by Colin Watt for September 2022

 

Achievements in last period

• UAT feedback has been provided to the supplier (Project team awaiting updates).
• Having established that there is an option to migrate the QMP on-premise platform to the "on demand" (SaaS) platform, it has now been confirmed that the current live version would require an on-premise upgrade as a pre-requisite to migration, so it needs to be completed either way. The timing of the live upgrade is partially dependent on LTW resource availability.

Issues

• Availability of LTW resource has been affected and may impact on testing of UAT fixes, acceptance, and live upgrade.
• Supplier has not provided documentation on the DB Collation resolution as requested (they agreed to do so in August); this may delay the acceptance meeting and submission to GoCAB.
• Upgrade to LIVE now pushed back (revised timeline dependent on supplier response to UAT feedback, and LTW DLAM staff availability for the live updgrade) - aim is to avoid disruption to academic activity, possibly by completing live work by end calendar year 2022.

 

Next Steps

• Review outcome of UAT with Supplier and re-plan milestones based on confidence in time to fix issues.
• Work with supplier on any snagging ahead of LIVE upgrade.
• Re-schedule Live upgrade.

 

RAG Commentary:  Project RAG returns to RED. 

• Issue: Staff resourcing issues in the DLAM TEL Team means that project work is being deprioritised to focus on maintaining service reliability.
• Impact:  DLAM project work will significantly slow down.  In order to avoid disruption to academic activity, live work may be pushed into December to complete the live upgrade by end calendar year 2022.
• Next Steps: Increasing resources in the team by moving people around LTW where possible and readvertising where it has not been possible to fill posts.