Max’s Minute – Lessons Learned from the Bronco App-athon

March 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

Max talks about lessons learned from the first annual Bronco App-athon held March 2-4. Teams of student developers came together for a marathon coding session, building a variety of mobile apps and designing concepts of interest to the University’s student population.

Lessons learned that can be applied to the Office of Information Technology include the advantages of sharing and collaborating through teamwork, the importance of having passion for the work, leveraging the concepts of agile development, and thinking big to produce great results.

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

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The Roadmap Project (aka The University Project!)

December 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

A best practice is a method or technique consistently showing results superior to those achieved with other means.

One of the critical best practices for a successful higher education enterprise system project is when the project is not just an information technology project, but is a University project. 

This means not only is there a perception it is a University project, but there is the reality of it being a University project.

The fact that the Boise State Roadmap Project will impact and touch all students, faculty, and staff at some point during and after the project certainly gives the appearance of a University project.  If it were just the Office of Information Technology leading, managing and implementing systems, however, it would not truly be a University project.

For a true University project, leadership, planning, management and implementation responsibilities must be shared between the information technology department (OIT) and functional areas [Academic Affairs, Office of the Provost, Colleges, Student Affairs, University Administration (HRS, Finance, Research)].

Based on shared project responsibilities, the Boise State Enterprise Roadmap Project is a University Project.

Let’s take a look at the three governance, leadership, and management groups responsible for the project:

  • Information Technology Governance Council (ITGC), consisting of the University vice-presidents, and a Dean’s Council representative. This group is the executive sponsor of the project, and involved in major policy and budget discussions.
  • Information Technology Priority Council (ITPC), consisting of the Vice-Provosts, most of the Associate and Assistant VP’s, and Dean’s Council and student representatives. This group provides governance and advising with strategic decisions and priorities.
  • Roadmap Leadership Team (RLT), consisting of faculty plus functional and OIT managers and directors. This team is responsible for the tactical and operational aspects of the project.

Out of the nine members of the ITGC, there is one Office of Information Technology representative.

There are three Office of Information Technology representatives on the twelve-member ITPC.

Five of the eleven-member Roadmap Leadership Team team are from OIT.

Based on these numbers, 72% of the Roadmap governance, leadership, and management groups are functional or non-OIT. 

The Boise State Enterprise Roadmap Project is a University Project.

- Max

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email me at maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

The Roadmap Project is more than just updating our enterprise systems – HR/Payroll, Financials, and Student. We will be: implementing a research administration system to support our rapidly growing research mission; expanding our data warehouse and business intelligence use; developing an individualized unified web experience; evaluating our basic accounting structure – the chart of accounts (COA) to better align HR/Payroll, Financials, and growing Research needs; evaluating and implementing operational and organizational best practices for both technology and functional processes; improving and streamlining identity management and security; and, expanding and improving document management. We will also be putting in place the University policies, practices, and governance necessary to advance, sustain, and support enterprise systems.

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The Unified Web Experience at Boise State University

November 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

Unified Web ExperienceOver a month ago I did a “Max’s Minute” video blog on “Three Keys to Roadmap Success.” As I said in the video, I want to dive deeper into the three keys, or “pillars,” for Roadmap success.   I am going to discuss the second pillar here – The Unified Web Experience, or “UWE.”

What is the Unified Web Experience?

The UWE is a unified, individualized web experience for students, faculty, and staff. The UWE will know who you are, and will display information (including personal data) that is relevant to you.

The UWE will be an iterative project with additional features and functionality constantly being added. The UWE will provide academic information and administrative services for students, faculty and staff.  It will be a one-stop shop for your University web (and mobile) experience.

The Student UWE Experience

Students will access their class information, BroncoMail apps, tasks, University announcements, and more in the UWE environment. They’ll find information specific to the courses in which they are enrolled, to-do items, or any holds requiring attention. Students will also see quick links for the Library, Career Services, the Office of the Registrar, tutoring services, technical support, and many other essential student services.

Employee UWE Experience

Faculty and staff will quickly and easily access their HR, financial, and research information, and make use of dashboards, reports, and University-related workflow.

You will sign in to the UWE with your BroncoWeb username and password. You should only have to log in once to access all your services, information, and data. The intent is to have a robust, consistent, and individualized web and mobile experience while accessing Boise State online services and information.

The UWE Design

Intuitive and clean navigation following effective web design principles are all part of the overarching objectives of the UWE design, along with web accessibility. Focused user experience testing and feedback will be a big part of the implementation process.

Key design principles include:

  • Don’t make users think – get rid of the question marks; get rid of the decisions users need to make consciously, considering pros, cons and alternatives.
  • Focus user attention – understand screen real estate and what attracts attention to the human eye.
  • Expose features cleanly – let users clearly see what functions are available.
  • Strive for simplicity – remember, users are looking for information despite the design.
  • Consistency is our friend – it reduces the learning curve and gains user confidence and trust.
  • Test early, test often – by the actual proposed users, providing critical insights into usability.

Amazonification

Not all these features and functions will be available initially, but will evolve over time. We will adapt a concept called amazonification.  Ever notice when Amazon rolls out a new release or version? The answer is “NO.” But when you do go there, you see new features all the time. There are constant adjustments to user navigation, dynamic content, and more. That is what we need to do. Keep adding. Keep improving. Our web (and mobile) experience needs to be a continuous cycle of improvement. It needs to be flexible, individualized, dynamic, and relevant.

Most of the students, faculty, and staff will access and interact with enterprise systems and data by using the individualized Unified Web Experience. In a couple of years, the UWE will be a big piece of the perception of how well we did on the Roadmap Project. The UWE is fundamental, it is key, and it is core to the success of the Roadmap.

- Max

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email me at maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

The Roadmap Project is more than just updating our enterprise systems – HR/Payroll, Financials, and Student. We will be: implementing a research administration system to support our rapidly growing research mission; expanding our data warehouse and business intelligence use; developing an individualized unified web experience; evaluating our basic accounting structure – the chart of accounts (COA) – to better align HR/Payroll, Financials, and growing Research needs; evaluating and implementing operational and organizational best practices for both technology and functional processes; improving and streamlining identity management and security; and, expanding and improving document management. We will also be putting in place the University policies, practices, and governance necessary to advance, sustain, and support enterprise systems.

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Max’s Minute – Touchstones for IT Simplification

November 3, 2011 by 1 Comment

In his latest video, Max details eight touchstones for information technology simplification:

  1. Keep Score: Know what you’re doing, and fix what’s broken;
  2. Concept of One: Align IT staff to reduce duplication of effort and services;
  3. Concept of Zero: Outsource or partner to focus on value-added IT services;
  4. UWE: Unified Web Experience for a service-oriented architecture;
  5. Amazonification: Integrate applications to improve workflow iteratively;
  6. Free the Data: Make data accessible and useable;
  7. Stop Doing Stuff: Use one technology (not multiple) to do the same thing.
  8. Team Sport: Stand on the shoulders of others.

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email me at maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

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Max’s Minute – A Bit of Rain on OIT’s Parade

October 12, 2011 by Leave a comment

This week Max talks about recent PeopleSoft and WordPress outages that affected the entire campus community, along with network bandwidth issues in University Housing. What happened, and what is OIT doing to avoid these issues in the future?

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email me at maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

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Campus Engagement for the Roadmap

October 10, 2011 by Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I presented a “Max’s Minute” on the three keys to the success of the Roadmap Project. As I said in the video, I want to dive deeper into the three keys, or “pillars,” for Roadmap success.

Campus Engagement

I am going to discuss the first pillar here: Campus Engagement. How well we engage the campus, colleges, departments, faculty, researchers, staff, and students in addition to the core processing areas is fundamental to the success of the Roadmap Project. End user engagement and assessment, reviewing and re-engineering processes, developing requirements, and ultimately meeting requirements are all part of the engagement process. Engagement has to be two-way and active communication. Engagement needs to be structured so we establish initial points of input for our projects, as well as establishing longer term representation and engagement for the Roadmap Project and beyond.

The basic goals for the engagement process are to establish a foundation and consistent methodology for ongoing engagement; bring the campus into the Project; increase awareness and involvement from the campus in the Roadmap Project; ensure we are addressing the critical and high priority issues and items from the campus; and establish a communication framework to be used over the course of the project. We will take both a broad organizational and a focused stakeholder approach.

The CRT

We are calling the focused stakeholder approach the Campus Readiness Team, or CRT. The idea is to utilize this group throughout the project. We will identify a number of representatives from each organization who have different roles within that organization. We are looking for resources from academic, administrative and student areas.  For example, a college might expect to have an instructional faculty, research faculty, administrative resource, and a business manager as part of the CRT.

We will engage the CRT on a regular basis regarding the Roadmap Project. We will use the CRT to help define and refine requirements, review plans, test systems, verify we are addressing campus needs, and help us find and engage campus experts as needed. We will expect a vigorous two-way communication between the CRT representatives and the Project. We also expect the CRT representatives to communicate back to their organizations on the Project as appropriate. We will be using all modalities for communication (e.g., the web, emails, town halls, social media, etc.), including the CRT as part of our communication strategy.

Phases of Engagement

There will be multiple phases of engagement. Each phase will contain a defined set of projects and groups to engage. We currently have identified four phases. The projects in each phase will be determined by their sequence in the project – Phase I will include the projects that need to start at the beginning of the overall Project. Phase IV will include the projects that are sequenced at the end of the overall project. The groups that need to be engaged could be involved in one or up to all phases of the project.

And within each phase there will be multiple steps of the engagement process: 1) Broad Reaching; 2) Focusing and Facilitating; 3) Incorporating; and, 4) Ongoing Involvement. Step 1 will involve surveys and discussions that will identify key and critical items and issues for the Roadmap. Step 2 will begin to utilize the Campus Readiness Team to further refine details from Step 1, and gather and prioritize requirements from the campus. Step 3 will take the details from the first two steps and incorporate and address them in the fit-gap and design work. Step 4 will use CRT members to review processes and potential solutions, test processes and systems, and continuously solicit feedback and input. The process will be structured so the effort will be repeatable and ongoing throughout the Roadmap.

So, to summarize:

  • Campus Engagement is a key success factor for the Roadmap project.
  • We will use the concept of the Campus Readiness Team to help facilitate communication and engagement from colleges and departments.
  • There will be multiple phases of engagement and assessment.
  • The engagement process will be structured and repeatable

Look for announcements and communications about the initial end user assessment and the Campus Readiness Team in two weeks. Information regarding the role of the Campus Readiness Team as well as a request for representatives will be sent to campus areas in the next week. The CRT will be formally established by the end of October as part of the official Kick Off the Roadmap Project.  Members of the CRT and others will be asked to participate in a number of activities, such as our user conference in early November.

More updates will follow shortly and be posted on our website at roadmap.boisestate.edu.

- Max

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email me at maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

The Roadmap Project is more than just updating our Enterprise systems – HR/Payroll, Financials, and Student. We will be: implementing a research administration system to support our rapidly growing research mission; expanding our data warehouse and business intelligence use; developing an individualized unified web experience; evaluating our basic accounting structure – the chart of accounts (COA) to better align HR/Payroll, Financials, and growing Research needs; evaluating and implementing operational and organizational best practices for both technology and functional processes; improving and streamlining identity management and security; and, expanding and improving document management. We will also be putting in place the University policies, practices, and governance necessary to advance, sustain, and support enterprise systems.

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Max’s Minute – Three Keys to Roadmap Success

September 9, 2011 by Leave a comment

This week Max talks about the keys to the success of your Roadmap at Boise State. Campus engagement, robust yet easy to use data reporting, and a unified web presence for University enterprise systems are necessary to achieve the Roadmap goals:

Please check the Roadmap Project website often for updates, or better yet subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Public and private comments are welcomed and encouraged. Please comment on the blog posts or email me at maxdavis-johnson@boisestate.edu.

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Max’s Minute – Mobile Learning Symposium

September 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

Max invites everyone on campus to the Mobile Learning Symposium scheduled for September 12 & 13 in the Student Union Building:

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Max’s Minute – Providing Support for Research at Boise State

August 18, 2011 by Leave a comment

In his latest videoblog, Max is in our server room discussing free virtual servers for faculty and researchers at Boise State University, as well as our new high performance computing cluster and Boise State’s partnerships with other national research entities:

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Max’s Minute: Help Desk @ the Zone, Computer Kiosks, and Classroom Support

July 22, 2011 by 2 Comments

This week Max visits the Interactive Learning Center to introduce The Zone, open computer kiosks, and standardization of classroom technology support.

The Zone is a one-stop shop for students, faculty and staff to get support for both personal and work computers and software. Open computers are being placed in buildings all over campus, along with BroncoPrint stations, so students can access their data without having to go to a dedicated computer lab. Classroom technology standardization will make it easier for professors and students to leverage a common set of tools in each classroom location.

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