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.

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Presentation Overview

•The issue and its relevancy

•UWM and I&MT environments •Overview of the project

•Project team structure

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Presentation Overview cont.

•Strategy employed

•How the process worked

•The results

•Critical success factors

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Is “customization” a bad word?

It depends on your perspective.

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Is “customization” a bad word?

No – if you’re the recipient or the requestor

Yes – if you have to maintain the system in perpetuity

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Why are customizations an issue?

• Patches

• Future releases

• Testing

• Cost vs. Value

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Today’s focus:

How UWM handled customizations in its OASIS upgrade project

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MilwaukeeStudent Population: 27,840 Undergraduates: 23,640 Masters: 3,200 Doctoral: 1,000

Faculty and Staff: 3,360

Schools and Colleges: 12

Undergraduate programs: 155Masters programs: 49PhD programs: 20

UWM Campus93 acres

UWM at a Glance Major research university

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Cool neighborhood

Cooler near the lakeMILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

More Wisconsin residents attend UWM than any other university in the UW System.

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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

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UWM’s IT Environment cont.

Independent environments for:

• Production

• Demo

• Development

• Test

• TST2/PREP

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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

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The OASIS/PAWS Upgrade

PAWS is the

entry point to online student services

for students, faculty and staff

to do a variety of tasks.

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PAWS Applications• Student Records - online registration,

grades, schedules, transcripts, change of address

• Financial Aid - awards and status checking

• Student Financials - Bursar account checking

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Team StructureProject

Sponsors

Project Manager

Steering Committee

Core Team(Executive Group)

Communications/Training Team

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Our issues with customizations

• Maintenance vying for limited resources

• Had not reviewed since last implementation

• Some may be obsolete with delivered functionality

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How did we get there?Differing wants:

• Functionality same as legacy

• Simplification of delivered functionality

• Different “look and feel”

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What impacted customizations?

Changes in:

• UW System requirements ►Fees ► Reporting requirements ► Data collection

• UWM initiatives ►“Early warning” system

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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

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How did we proceed?

Brought in “third-party” facilitator

Role:

To facilitate business process review

and valuation of customizations

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Key Success Factors of Third-Party Facilitator

• Knowledge and understanding of:

►UW System

►Functionality of PeopleSoft student system

• Neutrality

• Support from project sponsors

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Development of strategy

• Review business processes

• Reengineer business processes if needed

• Compare delivered to customized functionality

• Examine cost/value of customization

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Results of the Process

• 24% fewer customizations

• All customizations considered in light of impact on maintenance and delivered objects

• Business processes examined and improved

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Results of the Process• Functionality geared to end-user and the

business processes

• Collaboration and improved relationships

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Critical Success Factors • Third-party facilitator

• Focus on business processes

• Team structure

• Project sponsor and steering committee support

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How do we sustain success ?

• Continue to nurture collaborative environment

• Incorporate formal change management system

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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