Project ORION: Expectations,
Guiding Principles, Critical Success Factors
Scope Phase Kick-Off Meetings
November 5, 1997
President Shumaker, Provost Garrison, the vice presidents, and sixty
members of the Project ORION teams worked on Wednesday, November 5, to lay out
the expectations, guiding principles, and critical success factors that will
organize the planning for and implementation of the PeopleSoft student
administration and human resources management system for the university.
This text is central to the teamwork and to the decision-making process that
have been established for Project ORION. Comments from the university community are
important and may be directed to the project management team via e-mail at project.orion@louisville.edu.
Project Expectations
- Implement base system as delivered in the foundation phase, 1997-99.
- Support the Challenge for Excellence and the Undergraduate Quality Initiative.
- Re-engineer (and, where appropriate, decentralize) business processes in the enrichment phase,
2000-2002.
- Automate business processes through workflow.
- Bring project in on time and on budget, but not at the expense of project staff.
- Allow University to adapt quickly to changes in university mission.
- Enhance management decision-making by improving data quality, accessibility,
query-and-report capabilities.
- Integrate databases and standardize data.
- Simplify business processes by streamlining, eliminating redundancy, and reducing
reconciliation of shadow systems
- Resolve Year 2000 issues for "in scope" systems.
- Maintain current systems during transition to the new architecture.
- Provide better service for transfer students.
- Identify realistic resource requirements for units and departments (e.g., new or updated
workstations and system-specific training for department end-users).
- Provide appropriate outcomes assessments.
- Document system functions and procedures.
- Prepare system environment to manage research space, productivity, and equipment.
- Begin transition to CAR funding of system requirements.
- Use improved system efficiency to permit reallocation of staff to mission-critical effort.
Guiding Principles
- Focus on making the system work as delivered (minimize modifications).
- Make timely decisions.
- Address implementation issues to stakeholders (e.g. faculty, administrators, staff) concurrently,
not serially.
- Make operational decisions at lowest appropriate level in the organization.
- Eliminate duplicate data (e.g, shadow systems) wherever possible.
- Challenge current processes with value-added standard.
- Avoid temporary reassignment of project resources to other tasks except in emergencies.
- Implement system "best practices" wherever possible.
- Honor thy scope.
- Honor thy Client: serve students/users/customers, not the provider.
- Maintain open communication with constituents.
- Evaluate shadow systems for potential replacement.
- Eliminate turf-tending: the university owns the data, not individuals or departments.
- Recognize project milestones.
- Ensure appropriate people are present and on-time to project meetings.
Critical Success Factors
- Executive commitment to the foundation and enrichment process
- Timely decision making
- Well-defined scope and objectives
- Retention of key personnel
- Successful campus-wide training program
- Availability of functional and technical staff
- Adequate technical staffing for migration to new technology (i.e., client server, web enabled
processes)
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Return to Project ORION Overview.
Posted 11/08/97
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