Review Process for Campus Technology Projects

Owned by Alex Markessinis
Last updated: Jul 20, 2018

Complete the Technology Project Origination Form to begin the approval process. If you are embarking on a technology-related project and are not sure whether you need to submit the form, please call Erica Carlo for anything involving Colleague or John Harris for other IT projects. Once a completed form is received, technology staff will make every effort to review your requests in a timely manner and provide you with realistic feedback on the implementation requirements and estimated timeline.

Why a Review Process for Tech Projects?

The campus community is continually developing plans to improve business processes, offer new or improved services or comply with State/Federal mandates. These projects are usually accompanied by the purchase of web services, software, computers, and/or creation of servers or integration with Sage directory services (logins/passwords). These activities typically require support and coordination across technology units. The Tech Review process is meant to help you achieve your tech project goals as efficiently as possible. It's designed to...

  • Improve planning, coordination, and workflow related to all campus technology projects ;
  • Ensure that the user community affected by the project is on board and aware of the new initiative;
  • Assist technology staff by providing advance notice for projects, programs, and services that require the involvement of our technology units and allows the units to review potential impacts of the initiatives;
  • Ensure that initiatives requiring system integration, network utilization, site licensing for software, etc. proceed with reasonable timeline expectations. 

Types of Projects Covered

Submit the Technology Project Origination Form for any new technology project that involves one or more of the following components:

  • Integration with Colleague systems or data;
  • Integration with other campus systems or services or other administrative systems;
  • Authentication of users via LDAP;
  • Software or systems that capture, process, or distribute personal data for students, faculty, staff, or alumni;
  • Implementation of new software programs, including web applications/software as a service;
  • New software, hardware or virtual servers that require the use of the campus network;
  • New third party systems or services
  • Expansion of your department, new office area.
  • Migration of a service to a new platform. 

Types of Projects Not Covered

  • Day-to-day Colleague programming requests;
  • Day-to-day help desk requests;
  • Purchase of stand-alone software for an individual's computer (unless student/personnel data will be entered in the software);
  • Purchase of media items that are coordinated by departments (e.g., digital cameras).

Timeline for Project Approval/Completion

Please provide as much lead time as possible. How quickly your project can be completed will depend on a number of factors including the number and type of projects already scheduled, size and complexity of the project and time of year.  Projects may get “bumped” if a higher priority project is assigned.

Deciding on a priority for a given project is subjective, but follows the basic guidelines below, please remember these are simply guidelines.

Projects typically fall into one of three general levels:

                Priority 1: Public Safety or Compliance issues

                Priority 2: High institutional priority OR widespread impact OR impacting enrollment/retention

                Priority 3: Routine project, not urgent, significant time, effort or complexity

Project Review

Typically, when a project request is received, it will be reviewed and scheduled. In some cases however, there may be conflicting priorities that require further discussion before a timeline for completion can be determined. In that case, consultation and assistance with prioritization will be requested from the following groups, as appropriate (depending on the nature of the project):

  • CAIT Committee on Academic Information Technology- academic projects
  • CUG- Colleague User’s Group- administrative projects
  • Cabinet- Institutionally significant projects or projects needing additional resources to complete.

 

Contact John Harris (harrij8@sage.edu) or Erica Carlo (carloe@sage.edu) for more information.


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