System Integration Testing began this week with our Finance Community to see how the General Ledger system operates in an environment that includes the various systems that feed information to it.  To understand the testing that each process will face, I am attaching a CUNYfirst Focus sheet in this email to explain the testing plan for General Ledger and the Project at large.  The next phase of testing the General Ledger is User Acceptance Testing where the processes are pushed to the limits to ensure it meets CUNY standards.

General Ledger – Training the Trainers

We will begin Training the Trainers for General Ledger next week, with a two-day course.  On Monday and Tuesday, trainers identified for colleges in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island will meet at the Brooklyn Borough Training Center for the presentation workshop.  Wednesday and Thursday, trainers from Manhattan and the Bronx will participate in the same instruction at the Manhattan Borough Training Center at City College.  The focus next week will be to give them skills to manage the learning environment and facilitate the training for our end users, which begins in May.

Project Management/Change Management – General Ledger

The General Ledger Organizational Readiness Checklist was developed from the project plan for campus based activities, with input from the various CUNYfirst Project Teams (Finance Pillar, Security, Technical Readiness, Data Conversion, Testing, etc.).  The objective is  to prepare to "Go-Live" with the General Ledger in July.  These activities will be conducted by the Campus Teams with instructions being given by the Core CUNYfirst Project Team.  Specific Campus Team responsibilities are:    

• The Campus Team Project Management Liaison will coordinate organizational readiness activities at the campus, working with the Campus Team members
• The Campus Team Change Management Liaison will monitor the progress of completing the organizational readiness activities on campus, working with the Campus Team Project Management Liaison to identify those activities that need further attention
• The Campus Team Members (e.g., Security Liaison, Technical Readiness Liaison, Finance Pillar Lead, etc.) will execute and complete the organizational readiness activities by the due dates. If tasks on the Checklist are unclear, Campus Team members should get in touch with their respective CUNYfirst Project team contact
• It is important for the Campus Teams to meet as needed to communicate progress on organizational readiness activities.  The Campus Team Change Management Liaison will monitor the completion of the activities on the Checklist, and will forward progress to the CUNYfirst Project Team.  Campus organizational readiness success will be measured by the completion of the activities by the due dates.

Next Week and Beyond

The CUNYfirst Steering Committee will meet Wednesday here at West 57^th.  They receive an update on Project Status and see a demonstration of the Enterprise Learning Management (ELM) system from Training Manager Adante Harvey.  ELM will manage our learning and training activities for the Project.  It is important to note that our ELM system went live April 9.  Thanks to everyone, especially our campus experts who tested and helped put this system into production

On April 16, the Finance Liaisons will meet at West 41^st.  On their agenda is working with their campus Project Liaison to understand their work for the GL Readiness Checklist, an update on Training, updates on testing (including User Acceptance Training), reporting and the current status of the Chart of Accounts.

We are working with the Baruch Survey Unit to finalize the upcoming CUNYfirst Community Survey about the Project.  That survey will be sent out to about 7,000 recipients at the end of April

SharePoint and Project Graphics/Templates

The Project Calendar is on our SharePoint site – https://firstsharepoint.cuny.edu.  Access right now is extended to Campus Executives, Project, Change Management and Communications Liaisons.  All liaisons will have access by the end of April.

The new CUNYfirst style guide is written to accompany the new Project Graphics package.  That guide is available on the SharePoint site or from the Communications Team.

CUNY’s Human Resources staff, all over the university, has been engaged for a long time in making sure all personnel data is up to date and accurate.  When CUPS (City University Personnel System) data is transferred and becomes CUNYfirst data, our professionals will have completed many tasks to ensure accuracy and completeness.  Currently, staff is reviewing and validating that our current CUPS departments are correctly mapped to those found in the CUNYfirst Chart of Accounts in order to integrate properly with our Finance and Business needs.  That work is due April 17 – next Friday.  Meetings to validate that work and correct any remaining data errors will take place the following week.  Ensuring correct names, addresses, positions, email addresses and other data has been part of the ongoing data validation effort.  We are extremely grateful for HR professionals all over CUNY who have taken great care in this endeavor, and also the support of our HR community in supporting our work prior to launch. One of the remaining steps in data validation is finalizing the security roles created for our employees so they can perform CUNYfirst tasks once the new system goes live.

Human Resources – Users Acceptance Testing Update

Users Acceptance Testing (UAT) continued this week, mostly on Workforce Administration and Labor Administration, which testers were able to get through nearly 50% of the Cycle 4 scripts.  Testers also retested processes that failed earlier tests and were re-engineered to meet CUNY requirements.

Testing continues from Tuesday through Friday next week with Wednesday’s session focusing on the retesting process.

Human Resources – Train the Trainer

Train the Trainer sessions resume April 20.  An updated scheduled was distributed today by Training Manager Adante Harvey.

Super Users – HR and Campus Solutions (Student Administration)

As the project moves closer to implementing the HR functionality and the first phase of Campus Solutions, an effort is underway to build a community of super users who will play a key role in helping the university learn and use the new systems.

For the Human Capital Management (HCM) module, there are now a group of 58 super users from all 23 campuses who have been formally designated as super users. These are individuals who are already known as “go to” staff on their campuses, who know the legacy processes well and are on the forefront of learning CUNYfirst. Many are either train the trainer candidates or testers in User Acceptance Testing.
 
The HCM Super Users group has had a couple of orientation sessions, launched a discussion listserv, and in the past week, held their first meeting via conference call and webex. Some of the topics covered included a project update, status of the group, special access and training, as well as some of the resources available on the CUNYfirst (first.cuny.edu) web site. The group will continue to meet on a regular basis.
 
For CS, super users from the two vanguard colleges held a first orientation session this past Wednesday to go over why they were chosen for the group, how they will benefit from being tied together in a network and future steps.

Campus Town Halls and The Week Ahead – April 13-17  

Members of the CUNYfirst Core Team attended a Town Hall meeting hosted by the team at CUNY School of Law.  Attendees were given an update on the Project and information of the effect on them in the new Human Resources Module.  They also were shown part of the CUNYfirst Tour that can be found on the Project website – http://first.cuny.edu. The team at LaGuardia Community College will host a Town Hall meeting this coming Friday.

The CUNYfirst Training team announced both types of General Ledger training.  The first, Train the Trainer learning, will begin April 14.  In those sessions, campus participants will learn how to become effective trainers of end users.  Skills include: Presentation and delivery skills, classroom and group facilitation and mediation and conflict management.  In the second phase participants will be provided with GL content skills - how to teach others to work with CUNYfirst applications.  These sessions begins April 28 and concludes May 6.

The second end-user training for those who will directly use CUNYfirst General Ledger processes will begin May 19 with an orientation about CUNYfirst.  The end user training schedule is listed below.

All training will be conducted at our Borough Training Centers at Brooklyn College, City College, Hostos Community College and Queens College.  Our Training Manager Adante Harvey will contact Train the Trainer candidates and end users directly about their learning activities.  Trainers and end-users will be reminded to work with supervisors to plan the time end users will be at training.

General Ledger Testing

Next week, our Finance Liaisons will take part in Systems Integration Testing for the General Ledger processes.  This involves testing the individual applications within the General Ledger module.  This testing will also see how the GL interacts with legacy systems that will need to feed information into our Chart of Account fields and provide the reports necessary for the business operations for CUNY and our campuses.  Testing reduces risk and uncertainty.

Our objectives for testing are:

• Assess quality of all elements of software modules
• Validate that system meets CUNY’s rigorous requirements
• Validate that technical performance is in accordance with CUNY business requirements and performance management
• Identify and correct errors prior to production operations

Those involved in this testing will try their best to challenge the applications to ensure its reliability when CUNYfirst is launched in July.

Help/Support Desk – User Acceptance Testing

User acceptance training for our Help/Support system took place this week.  We want to thank those from our campuses that tested the system for its readiness to support our General Ledger users when GL goes live this summer.

Project Management/Change Management- General Ledger

Project Management and Change Management Liaisons met Tuesday to learn the technical readiness needs for the project and who on our campuses is leading those efforts.  The meeting also served as an introduction to the Organizational Readiness tasks that will serve as the key indicator of campus readiness to use GL in the areas of interfaces, shadow systems, reporting, testing, training, end-user support, communications and security.  This checklist will provide direction to the campuses about how to work with the CUNYfirst Core Team to monitor activity and provide support needed as we work toward Go-Live.

Up Next

Coming up this week we’ll continue our work on the student side and understanding application security.  This is where we ensure that staff with specific functions can access the processes necessary to do their work, ensuring proper security protocol throughout the system.  Tuesday, those involved in managing our Student Records will take part in those discussions.

Next Friday, Campus Executives will meet.

SharePoint and Project Graphics/Templates

The Project Calendar is on our SharePoint site – https://firstsharepoint.cuny.edu.  Access right now is limited to Campus Executives, Project and Communications Liaisons.  All liaisons will have access by the end of April.

A new style guide is written to accompany the new Project Graphics package.  That guide is being sent to the Communication Liaisons who can make it available to members of their team.  It is also available on the SharePoint site.