Working Notes 2012 #8 Learning Platforms, Business Analysis, HR and JISC Elevator

It was reading week and half term so at little bit of breathing space (twin evils of emails and meetings much reduced)! I’ve been under the weather so it hasn’t been my most productive week but it has cleared time for other things like thinking!

Learning Platform Refresh Project

My big success this week is finishing the initiation phase of our Learning Platform Refresh project. This will be an ambitious/challenging/exciting service improvement dash across our technology enhanced learning platforms and services (Moodle, Equella, Lecture Capture etc) over the summer to spruce them up a bit. I’ve worked this week on refining the plan, sorting out resourcing, worrying about the risks and issues and starting to plot a timeline for migrating instances to new versions. It’s enough to make you gulp but technology enhanced learning is the area of my work that I enjoy best so I’m also really excited about it and the team we are putting together.

Talking About Business Analysis

We’ve also continued to work on shaping and defining the Analysis and Design team.

• Team Structure. We used a team meeting to hear pitches from everyone on our team structure and how we work with others and I’ve pulled these together into a presentation on our team roles and a team expertise matrix to record the domain, competency and systems expertise within the team.

• Performance Measures. We’ve discussed richer performance measures than just volume of work including health status, duration, benefits realisation and stakeholder feedback.

• Communicating Business Analysis and Enterprise Architecture. We want to share a message about what we do as a team that helps stakeholders understand how we can work with them. I’ve heard comments that suggest people think analysis is too technical, too sophisticated for what they need, will slow them down or is just about documenting requirements.

We don’t want to be seen as an imposition to tick a project governance box. We want people to see us as trusted advisors to call on to help people shape their ideas, choose the best solutions for the college (given our opportunities and constraints), and accelerate consensus.

I gave an early version of this presentation at an IT department meeting when the team was first formed but I’ve started to tidy it up and shape it into something we can use to start conversations with stakeholders. I hope it will evolve with each conversation.

Presentation on Slideshare: About Analysis and Design

Talking About People

This week also involved a Recruitment and Selection workshop run by our HR. I’d done this before so this was just a refresher particularly to get an update on on the Equality Act 2010. Of most interest at these workshops is meeting colleagues from across the college. You really appreciate what a diverse community our organisations are and have an opportunity to chat with a range of stakeholders over lunch that you would never usually get in one place. It was a great chance to float ideas and listen to grievance so was incredibly valuable.

JISC Elevator

The launch of JISC Elevator @JISCElevator caught my eye at the end of the week. This is JISC’s experiment with crowdsourced bid funding. At least three small projects will be funded in the first round, and maybe more depending on the funding requested. The idea is you create a video to pitch your idea and state how much money you need and how you would use it, post it on you tube, add it to the elevator and then encourage the community to vote your idea upwards towards funding nirvana.

It’s a great idea to encourage engagement, creative ideas and more community led funding decisions. I have an idea that I’ve had on the backburner for some time that this type of thing may be ideal for.

I’d like to have an idea of how cut down the project management overhead will also be. The site states:

“Projects funded via the elevator website will have different documentation requirements to standard JISC projects. These will take a lightweight form in keeping with the scale of elevator projects. For similar reasons elevator projects will not be expected to develop full sustainability, evaluation and quality assurance plans.”

and in the FAQs:

“This will be explained in detail to people who are successful at securing funding. However as these projects are small we will be taking a lightweight approach to reporting and will be managing all reporting via a project blog.”

However, the generic JISC terms and conditions are provided. Given we are already running two JISC projects I’d be relucatant to pitch without a clearer idea of what I’d be lettimg myself into rather than finding out afterwards.

Still tempting to be the first idea up there isn’t it? I feel sure some of the creative minds in our community have the web or video cameras at the ready and are beavering away on their elevator pitches.