Overview

Background

This project has been initiated as there have been changes to Consumer Protection legislation and the Teaching Excellence Framework in Higher Education. To comply with these changes, development work is required to the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Degree Finders. As the current applications are nearing end of life, this project will implement the minimum changes identified by Communications & Marketing (CAM) in the expectation that by implementing these smaller changes we can comply as far as possible, whilst another project will be initiated to consider the systems redevelopment needed for full compliance on sustainable infrastructure.

Scope

The scope of the project will be to deliver the required compliance changes to Postgraduate and Undergraduate Degree Finders. STU256 will be managed in the same was as STU251: Communications and Marketing will compile a list of JIRAs that will form the Business Requirements specification. These will be initially tested by the developer, peer tested by Applications Management, then handed over to CAM for User Acceptance Testing.  Deployment through the DEV, TEST and LIVE environments will be by using Bamboo, the automated deployment tool.

Out of scope

• Any development for enhancements.
• JIRA 6 and 24 - After discussions with Student Systems, it has been decided to take these XML feed JIRAs out of scope and include them when the application is redeveloped in the new platform. 
  • PG: Create an xml feed of our live output
  • Extend euclid data import to include JACS data
• Deliverable D6 in the table below is out of scope at initiation. It will be included in scope if other tasks take less time than estimated and if it is still possible to deliver within the agreed planning estimate. See note below objectives and deliverables table.
• PHP and Yii framework upgrade is out of scope for this project.

Assumptions

There are projects in the annual plan over the next two years that will evaluate the business requirements, and look to either upgrade PHP, re-write the application in a new framework or purchase an off the shelf product. STU256 is solely looking at the minimal small compliance upgrades in the interim. More information can be found in Issue 1

Objectives and Deliverables

The objectives of the project are listed in the table below.

* Note - Deliverable D.6. "Ability to publish multiple instances of Postgraduate degree finder" will be delivered on a time permitting basis. Deliverable D.5. will be coded in a way which will allow maximum portability of code so this change can be applied to the Postgraduate section with minimal effort. An estimation will be carried out, and project time spent to this point will be reviewed to see if it is feasible to do.

Benefits

The updates will ensure that CAM will comply with the latest Consumer Protection legislation and the Teaching Excellence Framework as far as possible without significant systems redevelopment, and avoid bad publicity or possible fine.

Success Criteria

The success criteria for each compliance update will be logged by CAM in JIRA, and the updates will be tested against this.

The project will deliver all the must have compliance updates on time and within the planning estimate.

Project Milestones