OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
PROJECT NAME: Analysis of Consolidated Financial View (CFV) for Students PREPARED BY: Sara Quigley DATE (MM/DD/YYYY): 04/02/2013
PROJECT CHARTER VERSION HISTORY VERSION DATE COMMENTS (DRAFT, SIGNED, REVISED – CURRENT STATUS) (MM/DD/YYYY) DRAFT 04/02/2013 Initial Draft for comments 1 04/06/2013 Approved by Project Sponsors
DOCUMENT PURPOSE The Project Charter documents the formal conversation between the Project Sponsor and the Project Manager/Team, including the definition of success for the project.
Once approved, the Project Charter communicates the current agreement between the Project Sponsor and the Project Team throughout the lifecycle of a project. The Charter provides a high-level overview of the project including the definition of project success, and project resource (people and funds) requirements.
Requests and additions to the project scope are considered “out-of-scope” for the current project. When a scope change is required, document a change request that includes an impact analysis of project cost, resources, schedule, and risk. The Project Sponsor then formally approves the scope change request.
The project manager will retain additional documents that provide detail on the management of the project, including a communications plan, an issues log, a risk log, a change management plan, a budget, and a work schedule.
REVIEW & APPROVAL (The Project Sponsor signature indicates approval of the Project Charter, and authorizes the Project Manager/Team to use identified resources to proceed with the detailed planning and execution of the project; using this charter as guide.) PROJECT SPONSOR(S) NAME SIGNATURE DATE Erin Gore, Associate Vice Chancellor/Chief Financial Officer Harry Le Grande, Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
CASE FOR CHANGE (What is the Current Situation?)
1. The lack of a consolidated view of fee bills, financial aid, and payments leaves students confused as to their financial standing.
All students are billed for registration fees and a variety of other educationally related charges for attending school. A majority of students receive some sort of financial assistance (e.g., scholarships, fellowships, loans) to help pay for the charges assessed by the campus, as well as outside costs (e.g., books, off-campus housing). There are several online sources that display a student's financial activity, which cause confusion regarding how web sites relate to each other and prompt questions about data integrity. Additionally, expenses for other auxiliary services (e.g., parking permits, Cal 1 Card deposits, library fines) are
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OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
outside the current financial systems/processes therefore students lack a streamlined view of “how much it costs to go to school.” This results in a significant amount of student and staff time being spent diagnosing billing, award disbursement and payment issues instead of resolving them. Students often misinterpret these different financial web sites and thus may come to an erroneous conclusion about their finances.
2. Websites are not updated at the same frequency resulting in mixed messages to students.
Due to the inconsistent and delayed information about financial activities, students do not know or understand what action, if any, they need to take. The financial activity can change daily (e.g., new charges assessed to the billing account, awards eligible for disbursement). Selected information is displayed online the same day, while other information is updated days or weeks later. Students are receiving different information from different websites and this leads to mixed messages regarding what action a student should be taking. The current displays do not provide sufficient up-to-date details for the students to understand the activity or to know if there is a problem/action that needs their attention.
3. Third-party supporters+ lack a consolidated and real-time view of students' financial activities.
Many third-party supporters (designated by the student) assist students with applying for financial aid and paying for educational expenses. Currently, they cannot see billing, payment or award disbursement activities between monthly statements. Similar to students, third-party payers would like one web site through which they can access real-time and complete financial information. +Parents, grandparents, guardians, or other people supporting students’ educational efforts as authorized by the student.
PURPOSE (What problem will be solved by the project? What value does this project add to the organization? How does this project align with the strategic priorities of the organization? What benefits are expected once the project is completed?)
This project is for funding for staffing to conduct domain and systems analysis, the first six (6) months of a multi-year effort. This 6-month funding will serve to inform a detailed project plan that, when executed as a future project, will improve the student financial online experience. During this work-planning phase the following roles are required:
Consolidated Financial View Team
Business Analyst: Dedicated functional analyst with expertise in user research, use case development, and student financials. Sr. Systems Analyst: Dedicated technical analyst with expertise in data transformation & integration, data analysis, and student systems analysis & design. Student Engagement Manager: The importance of student participation cannot be underestimated here. Hiring a recently graduated student full time for 6 months to serve as a dedicated student liaison will help plan, coordinate and conduct a coordinated student engagement and outreach effort. This is key to collecting quality information and driving the design. Student involvement will be central to keeping the analysis in line to achieving the goal of better serving the needs of students.
Solution Approach
Use Case Development. A set of core representative use cases will be developed at the outset and will serve as the foundation for the analysis process. Initial analysis conducted in November 2012 indicates that most billing confusion is related to one of 3 primary scenarios:
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OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
1. A 3rd party action has happened, but it is not reflected online as the student expects. E.g. A student expects a tuition adjustment reflected on her account since her in-state residence status was confirmed last week 2. Something has happened that triggered a change in a student’s aid packaging, and she now cannot determine the impact on her financial status. E.g. Student gets outside scholarship; this triggers his financial aid getting repackaged, and the student does not receive money that he expected 3. A student is unsure about her billing account status, is she responsible for all of the charges on her bill, will any awards be disbursed in the near future? She worries about being charged late fees. E.g. A grad student wonders why her fee remission hasn't been paid. Is she responsible for any part of her account balance?
The above 3 scenarios will be further refined in the contexts of: - Financial Aid - Housing & Dining - Registration (including residency, registration status) - Graduate Fellowships and Appointments - Auxiliary Services
Information Design and Data Analysis. Each use case will drive financial account summary and billing statement design. The information described in each scenario will be decomposed into data elements that flow through Berkeley’s student financial systems. Systems analysis will be conducted to determine where the data must be sourced from and how the data must be organized and presented in order to achieve easy-to-comprehend results.
Iterative Student Engagement. A key component of the analysis effort is student engagement, which will provide a mechanism for validating the information design and will also drive the focus of systems analysis. Students will be recruited to serve as real- life examples of the use cases and will be presented with data designs related to the students’ circumstances. The student feedback will identify gaps/errors in use case definition, and will trigger further information design and systems analysis in preparation of the next iteration, and so on.
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OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
RESULTS (What does success look like? How do we know that the problem described above is resolved? This typically involves clarifying metrics for operations once the project is completed.) # SUCCESS MEASURE 1 The analysis effort will result in the delivery of artifacts required to develop a detailed project plan for the implementation of a consolidated financial view. (see deliverables under SCOPE below)
SCOPE (The scope defines the boundaries in terms of where the project begins and ends. The scope describes what will be delivered - where, when, and how. It describes the services, functions, systems, solutions, or tangible products for which the sponsor will take delivery.)
FUNCTIONAL SCOPE
The functions that are in scope for this work include: • Financial Aid, Scholarships & Awards (Graduate and Undergraduate) • Student Accounts Receivable • Billing and Payment Services
Note: Auxiliary billing and payment services are of a secondary priority; for example, library fees are in scope as time permits during this project.
DELIVERABLES
• Use cases / User stories • An entity relationship diagram • A logical data model • An ETL (data transformation) specification • A data presentation specification • Recommendations for changing business processes and business rules
PROJECT CONSTRAINTS & ASSUMPTIONS (List the known and anticipated constraints, and the initial assumptions for the project.) # NAME 1 Technical challenges: Inadequate or interrupted source data access
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OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
2 Technical challenges: System limitations on data extraction and data interpretation 3 Dependent technology initiatives: CalCentral must provide resources and collaborate closely with the CFV project team to optimize iteration cycles and data collected otherwise the quality of the deliverables will be compromised 4 5 6
MILESTONE TIMELINE Use Case Development: Interviews, observations Data Analysis Set Up: Establish data access, get familiar with data January – February 2012 Student Engagement Set Up: Recruit and organize students Iterate as rapidly as possible in 4, 5 & 6 below Information Design : what data should be surfaced March – June 2012 Systems/Data Analysis : where to get that data (to be adjusted based on the project start date) Test with Students and capture feedback
FINANCE DESCRIPTION (Provide a high level narrative overview on the estimated investment requirements, the savings targets, and the ongoing funding model.) While the initial effort does not directly provide cost savings, it does improve the potential of obtaining savings by providing a clear picture of where investment could be focused to produce savings. Investigating the current state and providing a comprehensive picture of Student Financials will highlight work that could remove low value or redundant systems and/or streamline business operations to achieve savings.
RISKS (Identify the high-level project risks and the strategies to mitigate them.) RISK MITIGATION STRATEGY The timeline will be adjusted based on the availability of team Resource availability resources The busiest/most critical time of year varies among business units (e.g. March/April is the busiest for Financial Aid while mid-July through mid-September is the most critical period for CARS). Even during off-peak times of the year, key SMEs may be dedicated to Limited and insufficient access to SMEs solving operational problems and may be unavailable to project members. If team members are required to develop their own expertise in lieu of transfer of SME knowledge, the project timeline may have to be adjusted. Proper incentives to compensate for student time will minimize this risk. Use of social media and engaging key student leaders to assist in Limited and insufficient access to students the recruitment and outreach to students will further mitigate issues with access to students. The project sponsors and stakeholders should prioritize output to Quality deliverables cannot be generated within expected meet the timelines or to extend the duration to achieve greater time and budget clarity and desired deliverables quality. Sponsors to send a message to data gatekeeper(s) requesting access Inability to acquire data access on behalf of the business analysts
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OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
COMMUNICATION (Highlight the communication requirements between the Sponsor, the Key Stakeholders and the Project Team, including the frequency of check-ins, project reviews, and status reports (in person and written).) Tool Audience Type of Information Delivered Project Web Site Campus, Public Charter, general FAQs, outreach strategies
Google Docs Project Team Background, artifacts, research and analysis, meeting notes, OE deliverables Eclipse PPM Tool OE Program Office (OE PO) Current status, challenges, risks, next steps bSpace OE PO, other OE Project Teams OE required deliverables Meetings: Weekly: Project Team Project Team Research & analysis updates, solicitation of feedback, Monthly: Sponsors, OE PO Sponsors & OE Program Office requests for assistance if needed 6 weeks: Advisory Committee Advisory Committee 6 weeks: Student Representatives Student Representatives
Status Reports Sponsors Current status, challenges, risks, next steps
APPENDIX A - PROJECT ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES Name the members of the project team.
PROJECT SPONSOR: Provides overall direction, guidance, and funding for the project.
RESPONSIBILITIES include setting the vision and strategic direction, approving the project charter and plan; securing resources for the project; confirming the project’s goals and objectives; keeping abreast of major project activities; making decisions on escalated issues; and assisting in the resolution of roadblocks. NAME Erin Gore, Associate Vice Chancellor, CFO NAME Harry Le Grande, Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
FUNCTIONAL OWNER: Manages the impact of the project in their functional area.
RESPONSIBILITIES include ensuring agreed-upon project tasks and deliverables are completed, incorporating the views of their customers, providing functional expertise in a particular area, articulating requirements, and working to ensure that business needs are met. NAME Erin Gore, Associate Vice Chancellor, CFO NAME
PROJECT MANAGER: Leads the team in planning and implementing the project from initiation to closure.
RESPONSIBILITIES include scope and change management, keeping the project plan current (deliverables, schedule, and resources), issue and risk management, maintaining project documents, reporting project status, and facilitating conflict resolutions within the project and between cross-functional teams.. NAME Sara Quigley, Technical Business Analyst NAME
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OE PROJECT CHARTER for Consolidated Financial View
The PROJECT ADVISORY COMMITTEE includes key stakeholders and subject matter experts.
RESPONSIBILITIES include providing guidance on key issues. NAME Erin Gore, Associate Vice Chancellor, CFO NAME Joyce Sturm, Director of Billing and Payment Services (BPS) NAME Rachelle Feldman, Financial Aid & Scholarships Office (FASO) NAME Doug Au, Office of the Registrar (OR) NAME Michael Ferencz, Graduate Division (GradDiv) NAME Michelle Kniffin, Residential & Student Services (RSSP) NAME Kelle Jacobs, Office of Planning & Analysis (OPA) NAME Jennifer Hopkins, Student Affairs IT (SAIT) NAME Michael Palmer, Summer Sessions NAME Connor Landgraf, ASUC NAME Justin Sayarath, ASUC NAME Bahar Navab, Grad Assembly NAME Sanaz Mobasseri, Grad Assembly NAME Stacy Suh, ASUC Student Advocate
A SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT (SME) provides expertise on project elements including business process and current or new technical solutions.
RESPONSIBILITIES include maintaining up-to-date experience and knowledge on the subject matter, validating recommendations, and providing advice on what is critical to the performance of a project task. NAME John Aczon NAME Adrianne Araica NAME Gennady Minevich NAME Cal Student Central Team NAME Members of the CARS User Group
Describe the roles and responsibilities of the project participants. PROJECT TEAM MEMBERS
RESPONSIBILITIES include • understanding the work to be completed, completing the research, data gathering, analysis, and documentation, • informing the project manager and team members of issues, scope changes, risks, and quality concerns, and • proactively communicate status and manage expectations. NAME Sara Quigley ROLE Technical Business Analyst NAME Vishalli Loomba ROLE Student Engagement Manager
APPENDIX B - KEY TERMS & DEFINITIONS FOR THIS PROJECT CHARTER Define key terms unique to this Project Charter.
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