The SCO project team continued conducting HR Showcase sessions with Civil Service Department Support Teams as well as virtual chat sessions. The purpose of these sessions was to educate departments about the project's HR Data Collection initiative and some preparatory tasks to be completed. These tasks include gathering needed SAP information on: department organization structures, work schedules, work weeks, external garnishments, and participation in LC4800 disability plans. Recently, the project has experienced delays extracting legacy employment history programs. As such, Department Support Teams were instructed to temporarily suspend their data collection activities while the 21^st Century Project management team analyzes potential schedule impact. Project analysis and planning will continue through September to determine impact and course of action.

Currently, the project has reached a substantial milestone of 75% complete of the design and configuration for their Civil Service build. Progress continues.

Additional upcoming activities are scheduled to identify and communicate preparation tasks related to inbound and outbound interface testing with stakeholders.  

The team continues working on the CSU Integration Approach.  This approach will be used as a basis for more focused CSU design sessions. Key differences between Civil Service and CSU processes will be discussed in these sessions to further drive the CSU design for the 21^st Century Project.

The following activities have been completed or are currently underway:

• Project Organization
  • A new role of Project Director has been added to the CSU project organization. Evelyn Nazario, Systemwide Human Resources Senior Director of Compensation and Jessie Lum, Deputy CMS Senior Director have been appointed as joint Project Directors representing a Systemwide HR and CMS partnership. In their role, Evelyn and Jessie are responsible and accountable for the success and oversight of the project including vision, direction, relationship management, issues resolution, and overall design and execution. The Project Management Team reports and escalates to the Project Directors. The Project Directors report and escalate to the Project Executive Sponsors, Gail Brooks, Human Resources Interim Vice Chancellor and Mike McLean, Interim CIO and Assistant Vice Chancellor Information Technology Services.
• CSU/SCO August Meeting
  • CSU Project Directors and members of the Project Management Team met with Dave Dawson, SCO Project Director and SCO Project Team leads on August 18, 2008. The SCO continues its configuration effort for the Civil Service agencies and has begun development of functional specifications and interfaces. Data collection activities were initiated for the Civil Service agencies but have temporarily been put on hold to troubleshoot a conversion issue that was encountered. The SCO Project Team is currently analyzing whether this will impact the CSU timeline. The effort to complete the retro processing design and resolve the concurrent employment issue continue to be top SCO priorities.
• PIM Team
  • The Project Integration Management (PIM) Team was established earlier this year to plan and manage the joint activities between the SCO Project Team and CSU teams. CSU PIM representatives are Elizabeth O’Shea and Cindy Cairns. The focus of the team over the past several months has been to define a high level overview of the anticipated SCO/CSU solution and activities required to complete the CSU design. The CSU/SCO Design Overview document (posted on the project web site) will be updated as details of the CSU design become available.
• CSU Project Plan
  • The CSU project plan continues to be under development as the SCO Project Team finalizes the CSU approach. Tasks associated with information gathering and documentation to support CSU design have been defined and are in progress. The CSU team is working with the SCO to identify campus activities, and key dates requiring campus involvement. Once available, this information will be provided to the campuses. The current implementation dates for the CSU are Q1 2010 Pilot(s) and Q2 2010 for all remaining campuses.
• CSU Pilot Campus
  • The SCO is in the process of establishing criteria for the CSU Pilot campus and will submit a formal request to the CSU in the near future. Once the request is received by the CSU Project Executive Sponsors, the decision will be finalized with the selected campus and communicated throughout the CSU.
• Business Process Team Update
• The Benefits Sub-Committee Team completed a draft of benefits-related processes. Campuses will have the opportunity to review and provide comments on these processes in September. This team is comprised of campus and Chancellor's Office benefits subject matter experts.
• Discussions with the SCO Project Team to confirm the CSU Official Employment Roster are currently in progress with members of CSU's Project Management Team. Human resources required data elements have been defined, and determinations on how CSU data requirements will be captured in SAP is being analyzed.
• Non-Resident Alien (NRA) Sub-Committee members met with SCO Project Team members in August to discuss CSU business requirements and to obtain information on NRA processing in SAP. Subcommittee deliverables have been defined and are in progress. Campus subject matter experts from the Fullerton and San Diego campuses participate on this committee.
• A Standardizing Action Reason Codes/Usage Sub-Committee is being formed. The objectives of this committee will be to validate and standardize action/reason code usage across the campuses; assist in data cleansing requirements to ensure data integrity for the data warehouse; establish a documentation manual for coding and processing to establish uniformity and consistency of transactions and fields that comprise the Official Employment Roster. Standardization and implementation activities will be communicated to the campuses during the course of this process. Campus subject matter experts from the Stanislaus and San Luis Obispo campuses have been requested to participate on this committee.
• Final payroll-related process documentation is available via the CSU/SCO 21^st Century website for campus use until further notice.
• Application Integration Team Update
  • The Application Integration Team continues to work with the SCO Project Team on the technology prototype effort. Initial communication was established between the CSU Oracle/PeopleSoft baseline application and the SCO SAP system. Transmission of a more complex test transaction will be conducted within the next couple of weeks.
  • CSU infrastructure set up activities are in progress and resolution of technical issues encountered is on-going.
  • The SCO Project Team is preparing a CSU build environment that is based on the Civil Service configuration. Planning is in progress to determine the general integration approach between the CSU and SCO applications. Data gathering and initial data mapping continues to progress.
• Data & Reporting/Data Warehouse Team Update
  • A structured data model review of the Employment History data mart was conducted in August. Members of the Data & Reporting/Data Warehouse team discussed and documented questions, design challenges, and resolution options relative to campus data usage and Systemwide HR uniform consistency.
  • The team continues its efforts to profile Employment History data with pilot campus data.
  • An overview of the new approach for developing standard security roles for end user reporting in the new environment was presented to the ISOs and HROs.
  • The HROs were introduced to the concept of "dashboard reporting" and the development of common reporting solutions which provide a systematic view of campus data.
• Change Management and Communication Team Update
  • An effort is underway to identify campus readiness activities to support campuses in their planning efforts. The CSU will have the opportunity to learn from SCO readiness activities and deliverables developed for the Civil Service agencies. A campus readiness plan will be shared with the campuses once it is developed.

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.