Project Management

Wrapping up Google Apps

Welcome to Google Apps! Through May and June, more than 26,000 email accounts were migrated to Google Apps for Education.

“We had some minor delays with the migration, but all in all, it’s been a successful project,” says Chris Roberts, Information Technology Services (ITS)Project Manager. He adds that some administrative work, and a few loose ends still need to be tied up.

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Roberts says most people, students and alumni, had no difficulty changing over to Google Mail. “From a user perspective, it went very well. The vast majority are quite happy with the new service.”

From an implementation perspective, the project was a success. “We met our deadlines—in fact, even with the delays, we finished the migrations ahead of the June 30th deadline.”

If you would like to learn more about our new Google Apps service, please visit our “Welcome To Google Apps” site.

Questions? Contact the Solutions Centre at (403) 329-2490 or at help@uleth.ca.

Going Google going great

As announced in March, (see: Student Email Moving Into The 21st Century) student email accounts have been migrated to Google Apps for Education. In order to ensure the migration goes smoothly a batch of early adopters, students who willingly participated as a test group, successfully had their email migrated to Google mail this month.

“The migration went very well,” says Chris Roberts, ITS Project Manager. “We received a lot of good feedback from users. They said they like the features, simplicity, layout and large storage space available in Google Apps.”

All students are now on the service and the project team will be turning their attention to migrating the 13,000 alumni accounts later this month. Students can also access their Google Apps email and calendar through the new Student Portal.

“We don’t anticipate any problems, but we have a number of resources available to users to assist if there are any issues. Everyone will receive detailed instructions via email before their accounts are moved,” says Roberts.

Major considerations include:

  • Users will need to change their passwords to ensure all features are enabled in Google Apps.
  • Users who currently forward their University email account to another email service (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) will need to set up new forwarding rules in Google Apps.

If you have any questions about this project, please contact the project team at student.email@uleth.ca. If you are a student or alumnus and have questions about the Google Apps service, please visit our Welcome to Google site or contact help@uleth.ca.

 

IT Projects – how does the University decide?

Cartoon people holding jigsaw pieces https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1251&bih=687&q=project+managment&oq=project+managment&gs_l=img.3..0i10l10.3444.10120.0.14050.27.16.8.3.4.0.111.863.14j2.16.0....0...1ac.1.35.img..0.27.894.GBMmu68k1k4#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=PZJoJycWJ2xUzM%253A%3B1r9YRcbd4nyrWM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.globalnpsolutions.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F04%252Fcartoon-of-mgmt.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.globalnpsolutions.com%252Fservices%252Fnpd-resources%252Fwhite-papers%252Fproduct-vs-project-management%252F%3B1210%3B1104From the University’s three-year-long Enterprise Recruitment and Retention Program, which includes the Student Portal project, the Business Intelligence project, and Strategic Roadmap project, to the three-month-long Canada Wide Science Fair wireless project, Information Technology Services is constantly juggling the number, length, complexity, importance and costs of IT-related projects for the U of L.

In order to determine which projects provide the best value to the University, an IT Projects Committee has been struck to tackle these large and critical decisions. “This is huge – it’s a very big step for IT,” says Chris Roberts, Manager for IT Services’ Project Management Office. “Prior to this, we had to use a ‘best effort’ approach to deciding which projects we had the capacity for, but this is obviously not ideal.”

Purchasing AtTask, a project portfolio management tool, provided a concrete solution to corralling and tracking all IT project requests into one central location. The next logical step was to form a committee to evaluate and prioritize all requests coming to ITS. “Leveraging this tool will help us report and sustain all projects by balancing resources with demand,” Roberts adds.

The IT Projects Committee, which will meet monthly, comprises representatives from across campus: Chris Horbachewski (VP Advancement), Chris Nicol (University Librarian), Charles Jorgenson (Acting Registrar), David Hinger (Director, Teaching Centre), Ken McInnes (Executive Director, HR), Carrie Takeyasu (Executive Director, Financial Services), TJ Hanson (Executive Director, Facilities), Jim Booth (Executive Director, Ancillary Services), along with IT Services reps: Mark Humphries (CIO), Darren Schell (Manager, Transformation), and Chris Roberts.

Roberts says the Committee is hoping to start its intake process later this spring, but further communication and details will follow.

 

 

Project & Portfolio Management tool selected

Over the last year, the IT Services Project Management Office (PMO) has conducted a project to identify the requirements for an enterprise-class Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) tool.  During this time, many meetings were held to communicate the project objectives and collect  requirements from departments and units across the University, with focus placed on those that conduct projects on a regular basis.  An online survey was also used to collect functional requirements of a potential tool.

Using the results from the meetings and survey, the PMO sent out a request to 14 PPM tool vendors, in Dec 2012, for information and pricing for their PPM solution.  After a rigourous selection process, including demonstrations of a number of the candidate tools, the selection committee chose AtTask Inc. (www.attask.com) as the PPM tool vendor.

Over the next two months, IT Services will work with AtTask to implement and configure the system to our needs.  We anticipate launching the new PPM system on April 1, 2013, after which it will serve as the focal point for project management and project governance in IT Services.

During the implementation of AtTask within ITS, we would be happy to discuss our experience with other units on campus who may be interested in utilizing this tool as well.

For further information concerning the PPM Tool project, please contact Chris Roberts.

Student Email Survey Results

As part of the student email revitialization project, ITS along with the email project team, created and distributed a survey to determine what the students wanted in a new email system.  We received a very large response of almost 1500 students with approximately 30% of the surveys submitted with written comments.  It was a confirmation that this topic really matters to  students and we are are in the throes of conducting focus groups before making a solution recommendation.

The survey results revealed some interesting wants of the students, as well as areas that didn’t really matter as much as we thought they would.  For example:

1.  Storage capacity increases are considered a must.  Our current system does not meet the needs of our current population.

2.  Mobile device access to email is becoming a necessity.  The current platform does not support it sufficiently.

3.  Online productivity tools are a desired feature of any new email system.

4.  We need to consider privacy aspects of email, especially for students working in counselling or other sensitive areas of study.

5.  Video chat doesn’t really matter when considering an email solution.

This and other data will begin to shape our recommendations which we hope to have approved by the end of the calendar year.  Pilot projects will then be spun up during the spring semester, with full implementation being completed before the end of summer.

We would like to express our appreciation for all the feedback provided by the students, their participation in the focus groups and want to assure them that we are listening and paying attention to what they want in a new system.

IT Services Portfolio

In order to increase ownership of its PM processes and to better connect with its business units, IT Services has embedded a staff member as the go-to resource within each of its units. These embedded staff members will ensure project reporting and processes are happening in a consistent and timely fashion. They report to the ITS unit managers, and have a dotted-line relationship with the Manager of the Project Management Office.  The PMO no longer actively manages projects, but is ultimately responsible for all reporting and processes.