Completion Report
Project Summary:
The Enhanced Feed project was initiated as a small funded project and estimated through planning at 50 days.
Our deliverables at planning.
- For AS to get applicant data when an offer is made. This will allow them to be able to run a fully concurrent application process in line with the University Student application timeline.
- AS will hold one student record validated by and sourced from the central Student Systems resource.
- UAT of the updated feed.
The deliverables have been successfully completed. Using the updated feed Accommodation Services (AS) are able to improve the way they interact with their potential customers. In particular they are able to communicate earlier which provides a more consistent application process for prospective students of the University.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 42 days
Staff Usage Actual: 46.6 days
Staff Usage Variance: 11%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
Our initial estimate was for 50 days. After initial analysis of the feed we reduced this to 40 days. We progressed with the appropriate documentation and sign off into Test at the turn of the year 14/15. At the testing stage several additional opportunities for the updated feed were identified by our Sponsor and Student Systems. We then re-examined elements within the feed.
Policy on who was guaranteed an offer of accommodation was changing and the alterations to the feed would allow Accommodation Services to incorporate this into their system. Due to very specific windows for delivery this delayed the deployment until the start of 2016. Towards the end of 2016 we upped the budget to 42 days, however testing the feed required the creation of 20 users in the TEST system at the beginning of 2016. This effort was not anticipated and alongside the extended duration has caused us to reach 10% above our budget. There have been efforts to move this effort from the project into the support budget, but this was rejected and so we close at 46.6 days.
Key Learning Points:
The analysis work done by Student Systems was excellent. In hindsight we may have been able to provide more assistance to the work Student System were undertaking if the project had completed Flow Diagrams to represent the new data. Although we did have these in our first iteration, we did not do this again when changes were made. As this was such a long project and stakeholders changed in all teams through the project it may have helped to have a more up to date visual representation of our developments.
It appeared difficult to verify the numbers in the feeds. In hindsight, the method of verifying the test data should have been established with Student Systems, Accommodation Systems and Kinetics during the business requirements phase.
Outstanding issues:
There are additional needs that have come to light as a result of going live with this new functionality. They are not outstanding issues for the project and will not prevent closure.
Our Sponsor has stated that it was always inevitable, given the way in which we all interpret the various fields/status flags in EUCLID, that there would be further steps to take. These steps are being worked through with Kx
- Students with the status ‘Applicants from Other Admissions’ currently cannot apply for accommodation and this is being rectified by Kx using the following logic. If the course start date is from 01/09 of whatever year and if 2 or more courses are listed in the student’s record, Kx to look at the second or last course to determine accommodation preferences. This is the highest priority change.
- ‘Cancelled – Deferred’ status students currently cannot apply for accommodation. Accommodation Services do have a work round where they are manually adding applications for these students and Kx will amend their logic to enable students to apply if they have a course start date in the future. This is not as major an issue due to the small numbers. Ideally we need a fix by end of May.
- For ‘New Entrant not yet matriculated/New entrant still to be matriculated’ students, Kx is currently working to change the logic to allow students with this status to make an application. The EUCLID system which feeds Kx will automatically be updating students to this status at the end of July so an alteration is required by the start of July.
- International Status/Fee Status. The University uses the International Status field to determine if students who are on an exchange programme are paying fees or not, so we have been left with the situation where we have been allowing those students to apply but Kx Applications is using the International Status field to determine if they are guaranteed an offer of accommodation or not. So we have students who are international and should be guaranteed receiving notifications that they are not covered by our guarantee. As they are still able to make an application, we can contact these students to let them know they are guaranteed and manually ‘enable’ the process for them. For next year, we will ask Kx to change the logic to look at Domicile not International Status and this should solve this issue.