1. UWM CIO Office Where Did These Customizations Come From? Do We Need Them? March 14, 2007 Jill Unglaub, Senior Application Analyst Information and Media Technologies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Copyright Jill Unglaub, 2007. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

2. UWM CIO Office Presentation Overview The issue and its relevancy UWM and I&MT environments Overview of the project Project team structure

3. UWM CIO Office Presentation Overview cont. Strategy employed How the process worked The results Critical success factors

4. UWM CIO Office Is “customization” a bad word? It depends on your perspective.

5. UWM CIO Office Is “customization” a bad word? No – if you’re the recipient or the requestor Yes – if you have to maintain the system in perpetuity

6. UWM CIO Office Why are customizations an issue? Patches Future releases Testing Cost vs. Value

7. UWM CIO Office Today’s focus: How UWM handled customizations in its OASIS upgrade project

8. UWM CIO Office Milwaukee Student Population: 27,840 Undergraduates: 23,640 Masters: 3,200 Doctoral: 1,000 Faculty and Staff: 3,360 Schools and Colleges: 12 Undergraduate programs: 155 Masters programs: 49 PhD programs: 20 UWM Campus 93 acres UWM at a Glance Major research university

9. UWM CIO Office Cool neighborhood Cooler near the lake MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN More Wisconsin residents attend UWM than any other university in the UW System.

10. UWM CIO Office UWM’s IT Environment Heterogeneous environment composed of: Mix of WinTel, AIX, Linux and Solaris Oracle database back-end Multiple WebLogic web servers front-ended by load balancers

11. UWM CIO Office UWM’s IT Environment cont. Independent environments for: Production Demo Development Test TST2/PREP

12. UWM CIO Office Key Releases 7.6 OASIS original implementation: Sept. 2000-March 2002 8.0 – OASIS release in July 2004 8.9 – OASIS release in Nov. 2006 Currently: 9.2 - Oracle Release 8.47 - PeopleTools release

13. UWM CIO Office The OASIS/PAWS Upgrade PAWS is the entry point to online student services for students, faculty and staff to do a variety of tasks.

14. UWM CIO Office PAWS Applications Student Records - online registration, grades, schedules, transcripts, change of address Financial Aid - awards and status checking Student Financials - Bursar account checking

15. UWM CIO Office Team Structure Project Sponsors Project Manager Core Team (Executive Group) Communications/ Training Team Steering Committee

16. UWM CIO Office Our issues with customizations Maintenance vying for limited resources Had not reviewed since last implementation Some may be obsolete with delivered functionality

17. UWM CIO Office How did we get there? Differing wants: Functionality same as legacy Simplification of delivered functionality Different “look and feel”

18. UWM CIO Office What impacted customizations? Changes in: UW System requirements ►Fees ► Reporting requirements ► Data collection UWM initiatives ►“Early warning” system

19. UWM CIO Office What impacted customizations? Customizations that couldn’t be avoided: ► Branding ► Tailoring “self-service” to business processes ► Eliminating features that didn’t fit or work well

20. UWM CIO Office How did we proceed? Brought in “third-party” facilitator Role: To facilitate business process review and valuation of customizations

21. UWM CIO Office Key Success Factors of Third-Party Facilitator Knowledge and understanding of: ►UW System ►Functionality of PeopleSoft student system Neutrality Support from project sponsors

22. UWM CIO Office Development of strategy Review business processes Reengineer business processes if needed Compare delivered to customized functionality Examine cost/value of customization

23. UWM CIO Office Results of the Process 24% fewer customizations All customizations considered in light of impact on maintenance and delivered objects Business processes examined and improved

24. UWM CIO Office Results of the Process Functionality geared to end-user and the business processes Collaboration and improved relationships

25. UWM CIO Office Critical Success Factors Third-party facilitator Focus on business processes Team structure Project sponsor and steering committee support

26. UWM CIO Office How do we sustain success ? Continue to nurture collaborative environment Incorporate formal change management system

27. UWM CIO Office Where Did These Customizations Come From? Do We Need Them? Jill Unglaub junglaub@uwm.edu 414-229-4005 Web sites: UWM: uwm.edu I&MT: www.imt.uwm.edu