Upgrade It? Replace It? Or Start a Revolution? An Adventure Story from the University of Arkansas

Spring/Summer 2000 - Vol. 51, No. 1

Upgrade It? Replace It? Or Start a Revolution? An Adventure Story from the University of Arkansas

A Revolution Is Sparked
Before a line of code was written, the university formed advisory groups, composed of key users, and brought them to meetings with the programmers and application owners to assess campus needs. The groups asked constituents to specify what they wanted the new system to do. If they brought stacks of paper and forms and said, “We want you to do this,” they were asked, “What do you really want? Re-think your paradigm, then come back and tell us again. This is your system. How can it make your work easier?” “We want to do it this way because this is how we have always done it” was an unacceptable response.Very quickly, the project turned into a complete re-engineering process affecting all of the university’s administrative applications. Rather than create electronic versions of the same old processes, the university asked that people question what had been done in the past and consider whether there might be a better way.

Introduction

So Many Needs

Any Capability I Want?

A Revolution is Sparked

Modules Away

1, 2, 3 Testing, Testing

Did Someone Mention Mistakes

Reaping the Rewards

Did all of the dozen or so people who handled and signed the personnel action form, with its seven self-carboned copies, really need to approve every transaction or did they simply need the transaction information? Could the process be accelerated if only true approvers electronically “signed” off and everyone else got the information online or in a report? Was a paper requisition that gets retyped onto a purchase order really needed? Should anyone have to use a typewriter? A file cabinet? Questions like these turned a software development project into a revolution.

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