February 6, 2015

Epics

Epics describe the top level goals and projects of the college for information system development. We’ve proposed a prioritized list of how urgent these epics are to the college, but we will seek feedback about this prioritization in face-to-face meetings including our quarterly roadmap planning meeting. This list and the priority order will continue to be refined.

Urgency level of epics is an important factor in prioritizing work for development cycles, but other factors including completeness of requirements, due dates, dependencies and organizational risk are considered.

Bullet points are example projects to help explain the epic, they are not a complete list of work to be done on a given epic.

1. Grants

College needs a shared location for grant information to clarify support staff and keep deadlines visible.

• Fiscal support staff review
• Due date reporting
• Grants budget reporting

2. Meet Reporting Requirements

College needs to be able to respond to external reporting requirements to meet legal obligations, retain credentials, for program improvement, and to receive recognition.

• Database for test scores from various sources tied to applicant and student data with verification workflow
• Create tools for certification officer to comply with OSPI recommendation requirements
• Teacher education online assessment forms
• PESB data manual
• Refine applications to support PESB requirements

3. HR/Payroll

College needs tools to support HR and payroll processes.

• Way to capture large budget encumbrances (e.g. faculty salary)
• Implement new hire forms and workflow as part of a request system

4. Reporting and Information Dashboards

College needs to have usable and understandable access to the data in our information systems.

• Tableau dashboards for information system

5. Fiscal Business Operations

College needs tool for organized submission and tracking of fiscal business operations request to insure completeness and provide visibility of progress.

• Implement fiscal forms in business operations ticket system (starting with travel and purchasing)
• Link forms to other relevant systems

6. Better Use of Applicant Data

College needs to retain and fully utilize applicant data for advising, program evaluation and reporting. Currently much of our applicant data is provided by the Graduate School and after a time we lose access to it.

• Eliminate outages due to back end downtime
• Undergraduate applications and online review
• Ability to evaluate selection process by program
• Attach applicant data to student record to support advising

7. Authoritative Person Data

College needs shared authoritative resource for information about people. Person data should integrate official UW data wherever possible.

• Support HR and Payroll work flows, easier onboarding and offboarding of employees
• Reduce administration across information systems, better access management
• Data more consistent and up-to-date across systems

8. Course Planning

College needs tools to expose a shared plan for curriculum and course scheduling. Courses need to be staffed and mapped to funding. Course scheduling needs to be timely and accurate.

• Program curriculum grids represented in Courses Database
• Faculty teaching expectations and load accurately represented

9. Program Management & Advising

College needs tools to administer and report on academic programs and individual students.

• Track certification and endorsement programs
• OSS online petitions

10. Infrastructure Improvements

College information system infrastructure must run smoothly and efficiently so less effort is required on maintenance more attention can be paid to new features and improvements.

• Upgrade servers to PHP 5.5
• Migrate applications to shared infrastructure
• Create connections to UW central data to simplify data updates