The Upgrade: Designed by You, for You

According to the University’s Training and Usability Services team, The PeopleSoft Upgrade program went to great lengths to engage staff, faculty, and students in the design of the upgraded systems.

“Most projects have one or two usability evaluations with less than 10 users per session,” explained Nick Rosencrans, User Experience Analyst. “In contrast, The Upgrade held 11 usability evaluations with more than 150 people during a two-year period.”

Colleagues participate in
Design Thinking Workshops

That’s in addition to early focus groups, design workshops, and hundreds of user acceptance testing sessions. Why such a focus on engaging users? The Upgrade team applied lessons learned from previous efforts, and, as a result, determined that engaging users was critical to launching user-friendly systems that would be successfully adopted.

It started in summer 2012 with focus groups that led to design-thinking workshops. Each time users got together, they explored the possibilities: what would it be like for the U to have a single unified system? Using early prototypes, staff, faculty, and students delivered great insight into how they would like to use the MyU portal, the messaging, reporting tools, and more.

Samples of brainstorm exercises from Design Thinking Workshops

Work Streams team up to improve the student refunds process

Collaboration between work streams has made certain that in the future, the University will spend less time and money maintaining PeopleSoft while still offering the same high level of service to students. The Student and Finance ESUP work streams have been cooperating to ensure that the University can retire several costly modifications to the Student Refunds process. Their work will allow the University to adopt Oracle’s off-the-shelf solution using the Accounts Payable module in Finance (EFS) for refunds rather than the current process of using the Payroll module in HRMS. Despite this change, students will continue receiving refunds quickly through direct deposit; checks will also be available on-demand when a student is granted an exception to the University’s direct deposit requirement. 

Lisa Luhmann Bass, Business Analyst for the Enterprise Financial System (EFS) Module Support area, has provided guidance as the Student Financials team learns more about the Accounts Payable processes. "The Student and Finance work streams work well together to ensure the University leverages delivered PeopleSoft functionality instead of relying on expensive customization,” says Luhmann Bass. “Our collaboration will also help ease the testing and implementation process." 

The groundwork for improving this process was started five years ago. From 2009 to 2011, Carolee Cohen from Academic Support Resources (ASR) chaired the Student Financials Product Advisory Group (PAG). These advisory groups work with other Universities and Oracle to resolve issues and determine improvements for PeopleSoft. Jack Kimmes, also from ASR, participated in a working group in 2010 that defined development requirements for the refund process. This included allowing students to use direct deposit to receive their refund and a method for University staff to create a refund check on-demand. 

“Participation in the PAG definitely helped ensure that necessary improvements were included in PeopleSoft 9.0. It’s nice to see our work pay off for the University,” said Cohen. Had those improvements not been made by Oracle, the University likely would have had to bring several modifications forward. 

Using the off-the-shelf Oracle process will involve some changes for both staff and students, but ESUP staff is hard at work creating training materials that will guide staff and students through those changes. Those interested in some of the specific changes that will be happening around refunding can check out “What’s Changing - Refunding.”

Weekly Update and Key Messages for the Week of 01/28/13

Systemwide Collaboration a Challenge -- and a Top Priority -- for ESUP
One of the most challenging aspects of ESUP so far has been identifying effective ways for the ESUP team and system stakeholders to collaborate across functions, units and campuses. Phase 1: Plan & Discover requires the participation of hundreds of people from all five campuses of the University, many of whom have expertise in multiple work streams, as well as ongoing responsibilities to their home departments. In Phase 2: Analyze & Design, the need for consistent, well-equipped meeting space and reliable tele-conferencing and collaboration platforms becomes even more important, since Interactive Design and Prototyping (IDP) sessions will require continuous engagement from key stakeholders several hours a day for multiple weeks.

This is clearly not “business as usual” at the University -- which is why ESUP has made collaborative work spaces, facilities, and technology a top program priority. This effort has pushed existing platforms like Google and UMConnect further, in some cases, than they were meant to go -- as a result, we continue to test new equipment and software for affordable and effective solutions to keep our teams connected wherever their members are. The goal is to develop a technology “tool kit,” with multiple options for work streams and users based on their specific needs for each particular session. The program has also reserved space across the Twin Cities campuses for fit-gap validation sessions and IDP sessions (which begin in February for the Student work stream) and is building out new conference space to meet immediate and long-term needs. In fact, ESUP is helping to pilot the use of such flexible meeting and work space at the University of Minnesota, with the hope that the space, technology, and practices developed by the program will help the entire University community.

“ESUP is committed to changing culture and organizational practices, as well as upgrading technology,” said program director Andy Hill. “We are working to ensure new ways of broad engagement and participation, including new technologies, collaborative spaces, facilitated meeting techniques, and more.”

In a perfect world, an IDP session would convene in the same space from start to finish, with no need to reset the room for whomever is using it next, no equipment to transport, and dedicated technical support in case something goes wrong. The challenge of finding enough space on campus that can be used several hours a day, several days a week, for several months is tough enough -- ensuring that it is consistent space, equipped for intensive, collaborative, and creative work by colleagues in multiple locations across the state, is daunting indeed.

We need your input! If you have specific concerns or ideas for facilities, technologies, or techniques to improve collaboration and engagement as the ESUP work streams move into the IDP process, please contact Tricia Conway at conwa012@umn.edu.

It’s Still Early, But Changes Are Coming!
As more people across the University learn about ESUP, we hear the question more frequently: What will this mean for me and my work? Those who use the Student, HRMS, and Finance systems on a daily basis have specific questions about key features and processes that impact their jobs (positively or negatively).

Users haven’t heard a lot of specific changes announced yet, in part because of the nature of the methodology being used. The Student work stream, for example, is just finishing Phase 1: Plan & Discover (informally known as the “What, Not How” phase) -- which is concerned with comparing the off-the-shelf PeopleSoft product to our current processes in order to solidify the scope of the project. In Phase 2: Analyze & Design, the Student team will delve into how our system and business processes should work through the IDP process. It is during this process that more specific changes to the system and processes will be identified and described.

That said, the foundational work undertaken in Phase 1: Plan & Discover is yielding specific improvements already. The HRMS work stream, for example, announced last week that the team has identified 133 earnings codes that can be inactivated (approximately 40 of which the user community sees) due to infrequent use or opportunities for streamlining.  This reduction in earnings codes will simplify the entry of HR/Payroll for the user community and the Office of Human Resources.  These codes will be inactivated in March 2013; user communications will share the details of this change in the next several weeks. Meanwhile,  in the Student work stream, the five campuses have agreed to use a single, consistent set of classroom characteristics when the University moves to its new class scheduling system, Ad Astra. These classroom characteristics are used to determine whether a given space is equipped and appropriate for a particular class or activity. Agreeing to a consistent list across all campuses  eliminates a modification to the PeopleSoft system required to maintain campus-by-campus characteristics.

The ESUP team and leadership are committed to sharing information and specific changes as this process unfolds! If you have questions about the process or progress of ESUP, please email esup@umn.edu.

ESUP at the Legislature
As part of the University’s response to the Minnesota legislature regarding administrative efficiency at the University of Minnesota, President Eric Kaler asked the ESUP team to prepare a brief update on the program and its progress to date. The one-page update was reviewed by the ESUP Executive Oversight Committee and shared with the president last Wednesday. The update is also available online.

New Team Members In Williamson
Several members of the Technology team (Application Development and Testing) moved into Williamson 150 on Monday. If you see new colleagues, be sure to welcome them and introduce yourself!

Register by Wednesday for the Portal Kickoff!
Wikipedia defines a web portal as, "...a website that brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way." But what does that really mean? The U of M has myU, One Stop, and any number of online tools. But something is missing. Figuring that out is not a simple task. The real question is: "What SHOULD the portal be at the U of M?" Help us answer that question by attending the portal kickoff event.   Register for the event by Wednesday, Jan. 30, and learn more at z.umn.edu/portal.  If you can’t make the event, follow it on Twitter (#umnportal).

Weekly Update and Key Messages for the Week of 11/12/12

• The program and project directors want to thank the hundreds of subject-matter experts, end-users, and stakeholders from across the University of Minnesota system who have participated in the first few weeks of ESUP sessions.
• Project directors report that participants have been engaged, open to change, and embracing of the principle of reducing system customization.
• All five campuses have been well-represented, and despite occasional technical challenges, thus far everyone seems willing to take the time to do this right.
• Thank you, colleagues, for your time and effort so far!

• Last Wednesday, much of the ESUP Program repository on Google Drive were removed from view, disrupting access and work for a number of ESUP team members.
• The problem may have been triggered by a team member who had moved the ESUP Program folder to “My Drive,” then later decided to remove it from their personal drive.
• This action in itself should not have caused the more significant access problems that resulted, and the University has opened a ticket with Google to investigate these issues.
• Until the remaining repository folders and files are recovered and we understand exactly what happened, please do not remove the folder “ESUP Program” from your personal “My Drive.”

• Access to the ESUP Program repository on Google Drive is managed by the work stream project directors.
• If you are using Google but do not have access to the repository, please contact your project director.
• If you cannot use Google mail because of the nature of your work at the University, please let your project director know -- we need to know the scope of this problem so we can provide alternative access.
• Please do not rely on personal Gmail accounts to access ESUP folders and files.

• The ESUP Consolidated Calendar is now available online by clicking Calendar on the ESUP blog at upgrade.umn.edu.
• This calendar features all scheduled sessions across all work streams (primarily Student and HRMS at this point), plus blackout dates and other key events.
• For more information about these sessions, please contact the appropriate work stream project director.
• If you are a part of the University of Minnesota community and are unable to view these calendars, please email us at esup@umn.edu to report the issue.

• Approximately 180 people attended the University of Minnesota Duluth’s ESUP Kickoff Brown-Bag last Wednesday, Nov. 7, in Kirby Ballroom on UMD’s campus. 
• For more information, check out this brief overview of the event, including presentations.
• We hope to schedule similar forums on the other campuses in the next several weeks, and are looking into scheduling additional forums on the Twin Cities campus, as well.

• The Student work stream held its ESUP project kick-off on Thursday, Nov. 8. 
• More than 80 people, representing all five campuses, attended either in-person or online. 
• The purpose of the event was to create a shared understanding of project operations, project roles, and next steps for everyone involved with the project.
• The presentation can be found at z.umn.edu/studentkickoff. 
• The videos are not embedded in this version, but can be viewed using the following links:
• Bob McMaster: mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/html5/176355 
• Sue Van Voorhis: mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/html5/176361
• The Student work stream has also launched an informational web page with additional work stream-specific information at z.umn.edu/esupstudent.

• The current ESUP team roster, including both University of Minnesota (UMN) and CedarCrestone (CCI) team members, is now available online.
• This listing will continue to be updated regularly as the team composition changes.
• Please introduce yourself to those team members you don’t know when you have the chance!