Update From the Program Directors

The following message was shared with the ESUP Integration Steering Committee on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012:


FROM: Andy Hill and Rebecca Collings, ESUP Program Directors
TO: Integration Steering Committee

Dear Colleagues,

We wanted to take a moment to recognize the important progress we’ve made on the Enterprise System Upgrade Project (ESUP) in recent weeks. As you may know, earlier this month a number of key stakeholders met to work through our options regarding the required split of the current shared database for the University’s human resources (HR) and student systems. The benefits of creating two independent databases are several, including improved functionality and the ability to maintain and upgrade the HR and student systems independently.

Separating HR and student data is no small task. We want to congratulate and thank the project team members and stakeholders who made time, on very short notice, to work through the options and recommend a workable plan that provides increased flexibility and reduced risk for the University. The plan was approved by the Integration Steering Committee at its meeting last Thursday and is a milestone: the first critical decision point for work on the project. We are officially underway!

For an overview of the database planning discussion, please see CedarCrestone’s presentation, available online. If you have questions or concerns about the split, the decision, or its impact on your work, please share them with your respective project managers, and we will do our best to answer them for you.

ESUP project leadership, change management, and communications teams are meeting regularly to plan the move to assigned project space in Williamson Hall and West Bank Office Building and an official kickoff event for the project. The targeted date for these spaces to be ready for occupancy is Monday, Oct. 1, and the project kickoff event is tentatively slated for the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 16. More details about space and kickoff planning will be available in next few weeks.

Thank you again for your great work!

Andy Hill, Program Director, University of Minnesota
Rebecca Collings, Program Director, CedarCrestone