Completion Report

Project Summary:

Background

The Equality Challenge Unit's Athena SWAN Charter was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. The College of Science and Engineering had significant challenges delivering the information required for achieving and maintaining its Athena SWAN awards. There was also associated work for the HR Systems Team.

This project was set up to implement a technical solution which met the needs of the Business Requirements documented and signed off by the previous requirements gathering project, PPP001 Parental Calculations Analysis and Athena Swan Requirements. This included delivery of the technical design and implementation of the agreed solution to deliver the PPP001 requirements.

There was one area of design work which could not be completed at the time of the closure of PPP001. This related to Shared Parental Leave. The policy was still to be finalised at the time of the requirements being agreed. As this policy was now available, the analysis for this area was included in this project.

Objectives

The key objective for this project was to deliver an improved data capture and reporting solution to support Athena SWAN applications and renewals.

This has been achieved by enabling data in the following areas to be captured and reported on where previously manual tracking was required. The areas are:

• Application for promotion
• Maternity Leave
• Uptake of Paternity Leave, Shared Parental Leave, Adoption Leave, Parental Leave
• Application for Flexible Working - formal requests only

Deliverables

Benefits

The key benefits delivered by the project are

• Additional data captured and added to the HR MI Universe has enabled the HR Systems team to provide reports which the college can now run directly. This should lead to improved efficiency in obtaining the information required when applying for Athena Swan awards.
• Improved ability to report on parental pay for Athena Swan and equality reporting across the university.
• Improve Management Information available to university.

While this project was delivered for the College of Science and Engineering, it is believed that the work done in this project will also be of benefit to the other Colleges across the University. MVM have expressed interest in adopting this solution.

Success Criteria

The system changes were delivered to allow the capture of the required additional information. New reports to support the Athena SWAN renewal processes have been created based on the additional data and are now being used across the College. These changes alongside revised business processes will reduce the time and effort needed to prepare for future applications.

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 60 days

Staff Usage Actual: 35 days

Staff Usage Variance: -41%

Other Resource Estimate: 0 days

Other Resource Actual: 0 days

Other Resource Variance: 0%

Explanation for variance:

The IS deliverables were able to be completed using less days than expected in 15/16. Less time was needed than estimated for the following

• Business Analysis as there was little change from when the requirements were defined in PPP001. There was also very little requirement for support from the technical teams for the analysis.
• Test plans did not need to be amended as expected
• Development tasks were achieved at the low end of estimates or less
• No issues from UAT to be resolved
• No issues from deployment to be resolved

Therefore only 20d were used in 15/16 instead of the expected 48 days in that year. The project completed significantly under the estimate: while the majority of work did not complete until right at the end of the year and days could not therefore be returned to the programme for use elsewhere in 15/16, it is noted that the overall project budget across 15/16 and 16/17 should have been adjusted accordingly. In future, the re-estimation at the end of each stage should be noted as early as possible, and the estimate reduced accordingly to enable any additional funding to be allocated to other work.

During preparation for the roll out of the technical changes and processes, a change to the paternity process was identified which would make the process more robust. So while the technical changes had been implemented, there was a delay to the changes being used while this process change was worked through and timescales agreed with the Payroll and Pensions Technical Support Manager to make the required configuration change. In the end, the configuration change could not be accommodated prior to the Year End work and has been agreed as a future change (see outstanding issues below).

The project therefore had to remain open longer than planned to allow the revised processes to be finalised and introduced across the College. The estimated number of days for 2016/17 increased from 12 to 15.

Key Learning Points:

This project included simple technical changes which individually could have been managed by support calls. Managing this small scale system change as a project worked well due to the process changes and communications work which needed to be coordinated with the technical work. This would be recommended for similar pieces of work for the future.  

Outstanding issues:

The HR / Payroll system configuration required so Payroll can change the Paternity Absence Type (but not other Absence Types) on behalf of the College is still to be implemented. This was identified during the preparations for go live as a step which would make the process more robust.  It was initially thought this could be achieved in November, but the timescales had to be pushed back until after the Financial Year End work. It is therefore now expected to be done in April. An agreed process was put in place whereby Payroll would email the HR Teams if they receive a Paternity request until this change is made. Unidesk call I160908-0159 has the details. It was agreed to close the project and treat this as a support call to be actioned by the Payroll and Pensions Technical Support Manager.