Completion Report
Project Summary:
The Objectives, Scope, and Deliverables stated in the Project Brief were:
"The University seeks to develop a comprehensive business intelligence service for the University spanning the Colleges, Schools and Support Groups. The first phase of this project, the Needs Analysis, will identify information and reporting requirements for the BI service based on the scope defined by the following roles: - Heads of College and Schools - College Registrars - School Administrators - Heads of Teaching Organisations - Deans of Teaching and Learning - Principal Investigators for major research activities - Heads of Research - Research Administrators - Deans of Research This project will: - Identify the BI questions that these roles need to answer to satisfy immediate business needs - Identify the BI questions that these roles need to answer for their strategic planning - Identify the existing data sets which can be used answer these questions and what new or transformed data is required - Assess the extent to which staff have skills/experience to leverage an enhanced BI/MI environment and identify existing best practice The Discovery Phase will assess the current BI/MI environment to establish a baseline understanding of current challenges, pain points, information needs, reporting processes, source systems and data, areas of best practice and College/University wide priorities.
The Work/Task Breakdown stated in the Project Brief:
The project will be driven by stakeholder input captured through 3 methods: User Questionnaire - developed by the team and distributed online to data consumers and providers. This will provide a more holistic view of activities across the University and a basis for quantitative analysis. Face to Face Interviews - with groups of stakeholders in Colleges, Schools and Support Groups to better draw out, understand and document local requirements and challenges Workshops - thematic or role based workshops bringing together stakeholders from different parts of the University to discuss and challenge the key BI/MI themes with a University"
Following completion of this work the project team produced a report for KSC. This is published at:
https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/BIMI/Phase+1+-+BI+MI+Needs+Analysis
It was agreed at the KSC Meeting on 15th November 2012 that all project objectives and deliverables have been met.
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 20 days
Staff Usage Actual: 19 days
Staff Usage Variance: -5%
Other Resource Estimate: 0 days
Other Resource Actual: 0 days
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Explanation for variance:
20 days IS Apps effort was allocated to the project. It was expected that most of the effort would be from Project Services during the stakeholder meetings and worksops.
Actual Effort = 19 days
Breakdown by team:
Project Services = 18 days Service Management = 1 day
Key Learning Points:
The outcomes of the project as recommended by KSC are as follows:
Business Intelligence/Management Information
The needs analysis phase of the BI/MI Project has been completed. The Steering Group met at the end of October to discuss the findings, and this paper sets out those views and recommendations. The findings from the Needs Analysis phase presented no great surprises. It confirmed that, in the main, the University collects the data required to fulfil most of the organisations requirements. It also confirmed the view that data in central systems are not always accessible to stakeholders in ways that are useable or helpful for their purposes. In some cases, although the data are collected, it is not clear who has responsibility for the data sets and allowing access to stakeholders. Sometimes it appears that the most important information for an enquirer is knowing who, rather than what, to ask.
Key Principles
It was agreed that there are a number of key principles, which if adopted would resolve some of the issues raised during the needs analysis process: • Ownership of central datasets should be formalised and the process for accessing them, clearly defined. • Systems should make it easy to find, understand and use data. These systems should be created by experts taking account of pan-University needs. • Functional areas should be “linked together” so that cross functional reporting required by users is easier e.g. linking information to calculate course cost per student. • Duplication of systems and data collection should be avoided (i.e. local collection of variants of centrally available data). • Training should be more focused, locating expertise close to point of need but within a properly coordinated network that joins up pockets of expertise. There needs to be central coordination of such a network and a small, core function to drive this forward. Next Steps The need analysis phase has provided the University with an excellent starting point. It has confirmed that, in the main, we collect the data necessary to inform the decisions we need to take. The areas which need attention revolve around the ownership, trustworthiness and accessibility of that data. As such, the Steering Group proposes the following ‘next steps’: • Produce a 5-year plan and roadmap taking into account the above principles and setting out where BI/MI should be by the end of the 5-year timeframe. Such a high level plan can act as a framework to guide annual planning, allowing both a top down and bottom up approach to the planning process. This will require both a project definition and an assessment of required resources. • The production of a list of quick-win areas, which will result in progress being made without too much effort e.g. areas where the information is available but how to access it needs to be made clearer. • Consideration should be given to the creation of a standard dashboard giving users access to common information in real time. • Greater coordination and clearer governance of information across the University. An oversight group is required to have responsibility for the big picture and ensuring mechanisms are in place for discussing priorities, defining data sets and golden copies. There needs to be clear and understood definitions pertaining to each data set, ensuring that all users are aware of the ways in which data within the set have been collected, and/or interpreted.
Action requested: KSC is asked to agree the key principles and the consequent next steps, outlined above.
If KSC approves of the above principles and next steps, the Steering Group recommends the following: • A Programme Board is created, tasked with progression of the steps listed above. It is recommended that this is incorporated into the governance framework of KSC. • The Programme Board is tasked with the creation of a sub-group to identify the ‘quick wins’ referred to in step 1, above and to initiate a programme of work to ensure those wins are achieved, or en route to achievement, within the next 6 months. • The Programme Board to oversee an initial project to determine the fitness for internal purpose of existing data sets. It is suggested that this focuses on the student and research domains in the first instance, and identifies the common data for both central and local requirements. It should also look at how we join information together to enable colleagues to answers specific business needs questions such as information on student numbers, fees collected, course costing, number of research grant applications v research grant awards.
Action Requested: KSC is asked to appoint a Programme Board in order to move the project into the next phase.
Outstanding issues: