The following message is from Chief Information Officer Dr. Kellie B. Campbell:
In our last communication, available on our transformation website, we provided an update that Ferrilli had neared completion of Business Process Reviews (BPRs) and were validating findings. Since then, consultants have reviewed their initial assessments with functional teams to deliver official assessment and opportunity reports in the coming weeks. These final reports will be used to inform an executive design summary presentation to sponsors and stakeholders, and to drive the decisions and project plan moving forward. While are a few other teams that will still be reviewing their BPRs in the next few weeks, the prioritized reviews have been to support the functional areas that are timeliest for the business cycles to launching Vermont State University (VTSU).
Within these assessment reports there are a number of decision points that will need to be addressed over the course of the coming months and those decisions points will have a direct impact on our project timeline. Ferrilli consultants have created a document itemizing the key decision points noted in the assessment reports in the areas on Finance, Student Accounts, Financial aid, and Reg, Records & Advising. In many cases, these decisions are sequential in nature and Ferrilli has noted the date by which the decisions would need to be made to keep us on track.
Acknowledging that a number of decisions have impacts that cross over Admin Ops, Student Experience, and Academic Ops teams, the leads of those core teams have agreed to the following decision-making approach for addressing those decision points and any major decisions will be elevated to sponsors as part of the executive design presentation.
For areas of Finance and Student Accounts:
- Admin Ops Core Team will review and make decisions.
For areas of Financial Aid and Reg/Records/Advising:
- Decision-making will be prioritized for items needed by end of September, or where a later due date is specified but requiring involvement from faculty (e.g. requisite overrides, equivalencies, etc.). The assumption is that we will be transitioning to having folks in defined leadership positions at VTSU and can transition VTSU decision-making to them over time as we move through the project plan.
- In making decisions, will need to understand whether a decision is just impacting VTSU, or where a decision may impact CCV either by choice or required based on approved direction. For example, decisions to deliver self-service functionality will need to be a joint institution decision vs. processing rules where it may be appropriate to process as separate institutions.
- Consolidation design recommendations across CCV/VTSU will be part of the executive summary design debrief with sponsors.
- Where the decision list identifies stakeholders that should be involved, we will look to the team leads for those areas to make decisions on behalf of their team. Where decision involves multiple stakeholders/leads, if consensus is not reached, decision-making will go to transformation core team leads.
- For Reg/Records decisions, anywhere a decision involves Self-service, or Aviso, we need involve a rep from the Advising sub team to help make recommendation on the best practice/single process to be used.
A reminder to the general project governance, available on our transformation website. The project core team continues to meet weekly, and we strongly encourage you to feed questions, concerns, or opportunities to any member of the project core team.
We thank you for your ongoing engagement in this important work. We couldn’t do it without you and we appreciate it. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any specific follow-up questions.