10th Anniversary 1999 - 2009

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 1998-2000 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 http://www.iup.edu/page.aspx?id=61681

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

jmontgom@iup.edu

Bill Balint

wsbalint@iup.edu