In January, Don Scheppmann from the State Controller’s Office (SCO) met with the CSU 21^st Century Project Leadership, Gail Brooks and Mike McLean, to provide an update on the SCO project. The SCO and project integrator, BearingPoint, have completed a project timeline review and agreed to a contract amendment. This update impacts the overall project timeline for the Civil Service agencies as well as the CSU. It allows additional time in the project plan for design and testing as well as addressing issues related to concurrent employment and data conversion. The SCO, BearingPoint and CSU project teams are currently working together on an updated timeline for the CSU activities based on the updated SCO plan. At this time, the impact appears to be an approximate six month extension of the project timeline with the CSU pilot occurring in the 1st quarter of 2010 and the remaining CSU campuses going live in the 2nd quarter of 2010.

• Business Process Team Update
  • The review of payroll-related business processes has been completed by the Business Process team. The documents are currently being reformatted for posting to the project website. Campus input will be solicited from individuals having responsibility for or direct involvement in the execution of the processes through the assistance and coordination of Campus Coordinators at their respective campuses. The finalized documentation will be reviewed with the SCO project team to ensure that CSU payroll-related business requirements and issues are addressed.
• Application Integration Team Update
  • This team has activities in two key areas:
    • Reviewing the technology options for communication and integration, including the practical consideration of sending data to and from the SCO. The team is initiating detailed discussions with the appropriate CSU technical resources.
    • Analyzing the categories of transactions and anticipated volumes that will be communicated through the selected integration method.
• Data & Reporting/Data Warehouse Team Update
  • The team continues finalization of the in-depth business requirements review, including:
    • Documentation of the requirements for each business area and prioritizing pending tasks
    • Preparing for review and confirmation of requirements with key stakeholder groups (i.e. HUG, Payroll Managers, etc.)
• Change Management and Communication Team Update
  • The CSU Project Management Team has conducted 20 campus visits, including the Chancellor’s Office, and plans to visit the remaining campuses by mid-March. Feedback indicates that many campus representatives feel the in person visits are extremely valuable.
    
    The content of the visit consists of a formal presentation covering an overview of the project, including the project organization and proposed design overview, and the project communication approach. To ensure a meaningful visit, the Change Management and Communication (CMC) Team asked campuses to submit their questions in advance. Questions asked/addressed during the visits have been captured and those of interest to other stakeholders will be posted to the FAQ section on the project website.
    
    Feedback received from attendees has been valuable and at the conclusion of the visits, the CMC Team intends to update the project Communication Plan accordingly.

Be sure to check out the CSU/SCO 21^st Century Project list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) which is maintained on the project website. If you have any questions that you would like to see included in the FAQ list, please send them to 21questions@calstate.edu.

Ideas, comments, questions? Have news or other items you would like to see addressed in the next newsletter? If so, send an e-mail to 21questions@calstate.edu. We will attempt to address submissions that may be of interest to the CSU community. Please note that we may not be able to address all submissions.