Closure Report

IS Standards were confirmed / agreed by IS Stakeholders involved on the Project.

CISO were not able to give sign off due to the fact that Revolution Viewing were unable to provide feedback to all of the questions that were presented to them by CISO, specifically that Revolution Viewing were unable to source Pen Testing results from a third party (Kinista) that they use for their CMS.   CISO therefore have stated that it is a decision for the Business as to whether to launch.

Therefore the Business have taken the decision to launch, supported by the Senior Supplier, Programme and Project Managers and with the concern raised by InfoSec noted, recommending that the service to look for ways to manage or reduce this risk. For reference the Project did complete / pass a DPIA. 

Risk #4 Achieving Information Security Sign Off managed / tracked this.

Project stayed within scope?

(Yes/No); Reason if not.

Provide and enable both potential new and current first year Students with an enhanced User experience, with rich video, media and content, that will allow them to take a virtual tour of the University without needing, or potentially being able to physically attend

Provide Students with reassurance that Edinburgh is a vibrant, safe, world class University to conduct their studies

Fulfill stated purpose to excite, reassure and prepare, assessed via sentiment-based survey questions

Time and effort would have been saved if the project had been adopted by ISG sooner. 

Also once adopted by ISG the amount of IS effort to turn project around was underestimated.  Consequently the project didn't get the focus it needed in the early days, this was called out early by both the PM and BA and was rectified once resource was available to be allocated, however this did lead to an inordinate amount of work / coordination to get everything lined up that could have otherwise been allayed. 

The Project Sponsor / Team agree wholeheartedly that the project would have been easier if it had been under IS oversight from the start. 

It would have been better had the project been either totally inside ISG or totally outside, bringing it in after it had started was the most difficult option. 

SRA had tried to drive this previously and ultimately failed to get it over the line.   

The Project Sponsor, Clare Mackay, reflected the following points / learnings from this:

• The IS support, when it came in the form of dedicated project support was outstanding. Very grateful to Chris Lawford, for getting us started and I think he was absolutely right to call out early on that the workload wasn’t compatible with the Large Events project. Can't thank Richard Bailey enough for taking the reins and for doing such an excellent job of the project management. Emma McNab has been fantastic in providing support across the three projects I’ve been involved in, and it’s also important to acknowledge SEP’s input in the form of Michele Holubek.  While circumstances meant that Michele was unable to give all of the support she wanted to, her contribution was extremely valuable.
• Without dedicated support, it is very difficult for business units to navigate the many requirements that form part of our internal processes, and in some cases our legal obligations – including but not limited to procurement, legal, information security, data protection, accessibility, EdGel, UX, service management etc. One of the difficulties is that it is hard to understand what is mandatory and what is discretionary, and accordingly who has ownership of decisions and who is simply advising.
• The complexity outlined above is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, I feel confident in the standard set in relation to compliance in particular. On the other, at times the rigor felt slightly disproportionate to the size of the project. This slowed us down and, without the support we ultimately secured, may have proved a barrier to completion.
• Based on this it is recommended that IS consider a toolkit approach, where mandatories and good practice considerations are clearly laid out in the form of a checklist with supplementary guidance and key contacts would assist in future. 

It is recognised that SRA working both with Communication and Marketing (CAM), as well as IS, through a Programme Manager to help identify and assist with Business Requirements could benefit going forward to ensure a holistic strategy. 

Linked to the points in section 2 above and the 'one size fits all approach of Governance', the Project Sponsor has suggested that it would be beneficial / that we need to have an eye to our reputation as a client. 

Revolution Viewing expressed frustration retro fitting some of the ISG Governance with us on numerous occasions.  It is noted that this was compounded by the fact that as IS were not initially involved, it had not been specified / agreed with the supplier at the outset of the project when the original agreements were made.  While some of the issues were supplier side, and indicative that some of their services had not reached full maturity, it is recognised that the supplier works with multiple universities, and it was expressed that UoE are considered among their most demanding clients.  The Project did however manage to maintain a productive relationship with Revolution Viewing through deploying Sponsor and PM roles selectively to manage that relationship.

Engagement from all Project Team Members once the Project received the required focus was exceptional, to reiterate the entire Project Team with the support from key individuals, such as the Disability Information and Data Protection Officers, put in a tremendous amount of effort to achieve success and while also preparing for and during the start of the new academic year. 

Feedback on the Project Team of note included:

• The Sponsor was a pleasure to work with and has been extremely supportive and professional throughout the project. 
• Both Project Managers played a key role in the success of the project, picking it up quickly and managed the challenges extremely professionally.
• The SEP Business Analyst was so enthusiastic and supportive of the project too which just made the whole project enjoyable to be part of. 
• There was a really good team spirit throughout this project across the core team which is especially good to see during these challenging times when many of us have never met each other before.
• The SRA team worked incredibly hard.
• The Postgraduate and Undergraduate Recruitment Managers, supported by the Communications Officer, achieved a monumental amount with the content piece and putting together the supporting information / pages and their effort to achieve the results against aggressive time frames is noted.
• Despite the fact that the Disability Information and Data Protection Officers were clearly very busy, it is noted that they went out of their way to provide support and guidance in relation to EqIA and DPIA (both achieved).

It was agreed that from both a Stakeholder and Project Team perspective for future SRA Projects that post requirements gathering, SRA would look at streamlining their representation, as it is not as efficient to have so many people involved. 

It was felt that there was at times a 'design by committee approach', in particular with items such as the illustrative map at the sites core.  Whilst there are advantages to getting a lot of view points, things are slowed down by lots of opinions, especially differing ones.  Earlier / more effective management to drive quick decision making would have helped  mitigate this.  

The early identification of certain key dependencies for the Project, such as the illustrative map and the work required to create, amend and publish the content, would have relieved impact / stress on resource during the project and reduced the overall risk to delivery. 

Project Team references include:

Illustrative Map:

• This took too long and put timescales at jeopardy, although it looks great, had the project identified it as a key dependency earlier measures / controls could have been put in place to get it completed sooner.  These controls could have included:

  • A formal agreement / contract with clear dates, even potential penalities for non-completion, with the illustrator.
  • Ensuring that Stakeholder / Project Team feedback is provided against any key dependency in a concise and clear manner, again setting hard deadlines for feedback to the illustrator.
  • The Stakeholder / Project Team should understood consequences to providing further, or changed requirements to the illustrator and these require management.
  • It is noted that much of the requirements works took place while high numbers of the Project Team / Stakeholders were on annual leave and this should have been planned / factored in (as with all key dependencies), this could have been mitigated by the use of delegation of responsibility.

It should also be noted that the illustrator did an amazing job on the final maps produced, the end result is fantastic and it is great to be able to say it was produced by one of our Illustration graduates.

Content Creation:

• Schools’ capacity to engage was another risk, given the size of the content task. In the end this was successfully mitigated by taking a validation versus creation approach, where SRA added content to the site and asked Schools for feedback on the content in place, rather than to create outright.  This also had an advantage in creating a consistent 'tone' / approach to content across the site.

There were concerns that the project had leapfrogged planning phases in terms of identifying goals and success criteria, and framing the solution within the wider user journey.

In principle, the Project Team agrees on the importance of these foundations.  It is recognised that the very early work in SRA was undermined by too many points of view and the absence of a shared vision. However, by the time the project had evolved to where it was when IS picked it up, the vision had crystalised and felt confident in its aims (as set out in the Content Guidance). 

Therefore, without an adequate upfront time frame in this particular circumstance, it could have been an unnecessary delay, against time frames to support the virtual open days, to do too much work around goals and journey mapping. However, SRA would very much welcome the opportunity for future work with Web Content, Communications and Marketing to determine how they can optimally develop the Virtual Visit as it relates to the wider website.  This is being reflected / addressed in the definition of the ongoing BAU Content Creation / Amendment Process (see item 1 in 'Outstanding Issues' below).

Feedback from the Disability Information Officer (Viki Galt) was that some time could have been saved if accessibility had been considered from the start (before they prepared their first version).  Viki did concede that she understood that these are crazy times and things had to happen fast.  Viki also reflected that "It has been a good learning experience for me that some companies really are prepared to go the extra mile to make their products accessible as requested rather than just saying “it can’t be done”".

The Desktop Services needed to add virtualvisits.ed.ac.uk to the DirectAccess exclusion list so it is accessible on managed Windows desktop machines without the VPN.

It would be advisable that any Project that is adding a .ed.ac.uk URL for an externally hosted service should check / look to make sure that it is added to the exclusion list.

For information:

It is only University-managed Windows 10 laptops that have DirectAcess enabled (please see https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/computing/desktop-personal/supported/windows-10/what-is-directaccess-and-how-do-we-use-it for info on what DA does on Uni laptops). Essentially, it acts like a small, automatically-connected VPN service that allows particular Uni services to connect without requiring any further authentication, but it can block other services it doesn't know about if they are not whitelisted.

The exclusions are added by the Desktop Services team, so, if you have set up a URL / app in future and find that some colleagues on Uni Windows laptops can't access it, it would be a case of contact the IS Helpline for the attention of Desktop Services to look at having it added.

Business As Usual (BAU) Content Creation / Amendment Process. 

The Project Sponsor has looked to retain the SEP Business Analyst who is working with SRA / CAM in order to help deliver a BAU content creation / edit / amend process.  This will be critical in designing a sustainable approach for maximising the impact of this tool in the context of staffing pressures among core teams and distributed content contributors.  It would be a shame if a lack of resource (human and financial) were to impede future development of the Virtual Visit as a key recruitment tool and element of our recruitment-facing web estate.

It is noted that the BAU process is not part of the Projects objectives but was recognised that assistance was required.