10 th Anniversary Making Banner Your Own! - Jeff Montgomery & Bill Balint, IUP

General Announcements: Please turn off all cell phones/pagers If you must leave the session early, please do so as discreetly as possible Please avoid side conversations during the session Questions will be answered ….. Thank you for your cooperation

Problem Statement The base Banner product suite could not solve all of the information system requirements at our university – forcing us to buy, build, work around or do without. In many situations, the build option provided the best outcome when all factors were considered – so we needed a method to do this without hurting ourselves.

Resolution Create a methodology that would permit us to enhance Banner functionality within the project management, technical and functional constraints of our university as well as our overall commitment to Banner as our ERP.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA Public, Doctoral I 14,638 students Member, 14-university system (PASSHE) Two regional campuses One center and one culinary arts academy Four 501c(3) affiliates About Us

Banner Environment Implemented Version 8.x Five base modules, three self-service products Document Management, FSAatlas Dell Linux and Dell Windows servers Hundreds of custom-built enhancements Heavy use of third-party products (parking, facilities, Id Card, judicial, etc.) About Us (cont.)

Banner Enhancement Challenges Sungard-delivered upgrades Five major releases since 2001 Uniformity with Sungard-supplied solution Authentication, look-and-feel, documentation No new technical staffing Limit variety of technologies

Enhancement Challenges (cont.) Must ensure scarce resources are deployed appropriately Tight, but versatile and flexible governance Production support/daily operations cannot be compromised R&D must be maintained and funded

Meeting The Challenges Get Production Support in Order Get Technology Stack in Order Get Project Management Structure in Place

Production Support Build a formal support model for IT Staff Who supports what Not everybody can be responsible for everything Upgrade/patch support Cross training/back ups User Education Reduce amount of support required

Technology Stack Enhance functionality without modifying Banner Both an interactive and batch environment needed Version control and QA methodology are critical

Project Management IT Project Governance Prioritization method What constitutes a project? Planning Escalations Specification concepts FTE splits Obligation of the end-user Progress reports Flexibility, versatility, unplanned user needs

Project Management (cont.) IT Project Governance

Results - Personnel Application Development Group Coordinator Supervisor of all group members Senior Systems Analyst Group technical lead Application Administrators/DBAs Middleware, patches, upgrades Systems Analysts (7) One per module/sub-module Cross-trained backups, ancillaries

Results – Personnel (cont.) Technical Services Group Systems and Network Admin. Hardware, base level security User Services Group First-level customer care Banner navigation and ad-hoc reporting Desktop issues (ODBC, Oracle, etc.)

Governance Document Requests accepted from all – triage immediate Non-IT Services requests routed to correct location Production failures all hands on deck Two-day-and-under queue is FIFO Remainder placed into a project priority queue Project Prioritization

Project Priority Queues Five standard project priority queues One for each VP and one for President Reviewed four times a year, VP sets priorities for their queue Typically considers recommendations from divisional IT committee Two special queues Council of Deans annual projects Internal IT projects (CIO)

Current Technology Stack Batch: Pro*C (Banner Job Submission) Interactive: Web Tailor and Web PL/SQL Environment: Oracle Portal, Discover, Java/JSP, etc. from campus license Version Control: MS Visual Source Safe

Lessons Learned Governance message must be consistent Get new employees acquainted quickly Limit spec. work until project is prioritized Keep focus 9-18 months into the future to ease transitions (upgrade testing, new technologies)

Lessons Learned (cont.) Allow executive users to set priorities – keep the target off your back Confirm user availability before starting a project – reward those who plan effectively Advocate for creation of IT-related functional planning committees (problem resolution, escalations)

Lessons Learned – IT Employ a specialist plus back up support model Create teaching web pages where you can drive users and build their skills/knowledge Instruct users on the web page during training Maintain a vibrant test/development environment – regular refresh of data

Lessons Learned – IT (cont.) Use version control software actively Invest in your people User conferences, training, books, R&D Be an asset – not a liability! Ensure your efforts map to the mission of the institution and of your customer Limit time spent on efforts that do not meet this criteria

Enhancement Model – Next Steps Monitor the evolving Sungard HE technology stack carefully and be ready to adjust quickly Flex, AJAX, Cognos, LifeRay, SOA, etc. Ensure that our project governance and execution model is supported by new call- tracking system or find alternative

Open to the Floor Questions Comments Jeff Montgomery Bill Balint