UIS Project/Partnership/Integration

Provided To

Pacific University employees

Description

UIS Project Definition

A UIS project is an undertaking by a university department (UIS or other) that:

Has projected involvement of UIS staff of at least 40 hours of staff time.
Is made up of multiple phases or tasks.
Has a proposed start and end date.
Has set goals, with one or more goals that UIS can help to achieve.
Success of the project requires some level of project coordination by UIS on technology portions of the project (although UIS is not necessarily the sole or primary project coordinator or manager).

UIS Project Process

A UIS Project typically happens in the following phases. See the sections below for more information on some of these steps.

Step One: Initial Query and Consulting: This can happen as soon as you have identified a need that may result in a project. See the section on Project Coordination for more.
Step Two: Project Request Submission: This is done with the help of your UIS Project Coordinator and after a project has been scoped/planned in enough detail to be decided on by UIS.
Step Three: UIS Project Review: This is where UIS considers the project, its benefits to the university, its costs and risks, and makes a decision on UIS ability to assist with the project. UIS projects that cannot be acted on a the present time will be added to our list of pending projects and re-reviewed on an annual basis.
Step Four: UIS Project Review Communication: About two weeks after the project request is submitted, you should hear back from someone in UIS about UIS' ability to assist with the project.
Step Five: Project Charter: UIS will provide a document with what is known so far about the project plans, scope, resource commitments and planning. The charter is essentially an agreement between UIS and the project stakeholders, and should be reviewed and signed by the primary non-UIS person working with us on this project. See our article on Project Charters for more information.
Step Six: Project Planning: A UIS project manager will be assigned to you to help plan out and begin the project. This includes listing tasks and schedules and getting buy-in from everyone who will be involved in the project. Your project manager may or may not be the same person who was your UIS Project Coordinator.
Step Seven: Project Execution: The work on the project begins, with people within and outside of UIS completing tasks as defined in the established project timeline.
Step Eight: Project Closing: Once the work is finished, the sponsor needs to sign off that the project is, in fact, complete. Any contracts or financial arrangements associated with the contract must also be closed out.

UIS Project Consulting

UIS offers consulting for any type of project that may involve:

UIS work to help implement.
Adoption of a new major technology system or service.
A security and privacy assessment of a new technology or process.
New technology that integrates into any existing systems (e.g. network, single sign on, Colleague).
A significant change to an existing system that UIS maintains (e.g. a change of settings for Recruiter).
A significant change to business processes that may impact UIS maintained enterprise systems.
Any large scale project that may contain technology as one of its elements (e.g. new construction).

We encourage anyone contemplating such a project to use the form here to get in touch with us as early as possible in the process.

Project Coordination

After submitting a query, a project coordinator will reach out to you to:

Get more information about your needs and plans.
Let you know if any existing UIS-supported technology might meet your needs.
Help you scope out any work or evaluation that may need to be done by UIS as part of your project.
Help determine if your project needs to be submitted as a UIS project request, and if so will assist you in submitting the request.

Project Review

When a project request is submitted to UIS that request is evaluated, the decision is made based on the following criteria:

Resources required from UIS for the project (and availability fo those resources).
Ongoing resources required from UIS after the project ends to maintain or support new technology.
Benefit to the university from the project (e.g. monetary gain, student recruitment, student retention, employee efficiency).
Alignment of the project with the university's overall strategic goals.

Timing Factors

Please use this form to consult with us as soon as you begin contemplating a project as described above. The project coordination process (gathering information about your plans or needs) can take from days to months to complete, and the project submission and review process typically takes between 14 to 45 days to complete.