Overview
Background
This project was initiated to identify and deliver key enhancements to ABS and IS Apps-developed applications within Finance.
In order to enable Support to focus on 'Keeping the Show on the Road' activities, it has been agreed that a number of small enhancements will be taken forward under a project. This project will divide the enhancements into separate batches, and deliver as many enhancements as possible within the allocated budget. While the focus will be on ABS applications, there will also be some small changes to software developed in IS Apps.
Scope
This project has a fixed budget of 50 days. Those enhancements agreed to be within project scope will be prioritised by the FIS team, in discussion with IS Apps. Any enhancements that are not delivered by the close of this project will be rolled over into the project for next year.
Additional enhancement requests may be added at any time during the project. However, each addition must be agreed by the Project Sponsor before being added to the project list. As each new batch begins, the full list will be reassessed and re-prioritised, to determine which should be included in the new batch.
Requests for system fixes are outwith the scope of this project. These should continue to be raised as UniDesk calls, and addressed under Finance's Support budget.
Objectives
The objectives of the project are, by 31st July 2016, to:
- improve user experience of Finance systems
- deliver essential enhancements to Finance that might, under Support, have beed assigned a lower priority
- focus the delivery of essential enhancements over a series of short time periods
- remove the management of essential enhancements from the management of support calls, to that IS Support resources can remain dedicated to providing the maximum support possible
Deliverables
In order to meet the above objectives, the project will deliver:
- Prioritised list of enhancements
- Fully defined requirements for each high priority enhancement
- Prioritised batches of enhancements
- For each batch approved for action:
- a schedule for the batch's 's development, acceptance testing, and delivery, taking resource availability in Finance and IS Apps, and ABS where necessary, into account
- developed / deployed solutions, delivered to the Dev and Test environments
- updated technical documentation, as agreed between the development and production teams
- acceptance test plans, with testing outcomes
- approved solutions, delivered to the Live environment
Benefits (from Project Proposal)
- To continuously improve the provision of financial systems to our staff, students and visitors.
- To improve our service provision to external suppliers and customers.
- To allow Finance to deliver ongoing improvements to its processes and services
- To allow IS to deliver enhancements to applications on a flexible and responsive basis without impacting on highly scarce IS support resources
- To allow Finance to react to changing business requirements which emerge during the year
- A previous annual project delivered the complete removal of paper for manual payments from Accounts Payable at as estimated saving of £4 x 30,000. We would expect similar benefits to be delivered in relation to sales invoicing.
- FPM has transformed the accounts payable business process. We would like to do the same in areas such as Income Section, departments raising sales invoices e.g. Parking Office, Centre for Sports & Exercise etc.
- A previous annual project delivered process enhancements which have delivered savings of 100,000 pages per year through redesigning the purchase ordering print process.
- Finance is now restructuring to include a continuous improvement team working with all areas involved in finance to identify and deliver enhancements. This project is an essential resource for the team and the delivery of that new service. It aligns clearly with the Finance vision to deliver improved and faster, fairer and friendlier transaction processing.
Success Criteria
Delivery of a number of prioritised small to medium system enhancements (within the available budget).