7 REGLAS PROCESALES

After the problems encountered with the undergraduate go-live it was necessary for members of the team to go out into the offices and see the actual problems that were being encountered. Prior to this there was a reliance on the support desk for help with the system when users had problems or didn’t know how to do something. The only other place users could go to for help was the FAQs on the website. These take the form of a list of questions which when selected take you to the answer. However this was very confusing for users. When they selected a question they were taken to a list of answers that are numbered but the question is not repeated, requiring them to remember its number to know which answer to read. Normally you would expect the answer to be the one that appears at top of the screen however this is not case and this causes further confusion when determining which answer to read. The FAQs are also difficult to keep up to date and don’t always contain the types of questions a user would think to check them for.

During the project team’s visits to the college offices it became clear to users that there were often easier ways of doing things that they had not been aware of. One user commented that these sessions were extremely useful and would have been even more so if they had been given that information from the start. There was a distinct lack of communication and sharing of information between the colleges, something

that does not appear to occur during any stage of the project. Some were aware of easy ways of doing things while others would spend a long time trying to carry out the same task. If a problem was encountered or a way to work round a bug was found this would remain in the college rather than be shared with other users. The team and support staff then found themselves repeating things to several users in different parts of each college.

There was also a feeling amongst members of one college that the project team saw them as just moaning for the sake of it and they found this unfair. They felt that when they reported a problem they were made feel it was their fault and that they were doing something wrong. When they became aware of others in different colleges encountering similar problems it helped act as reassurance that it wasn’t just them doing things wrong. Problems did exist with what the system allowed them to do, as well as the bugs that were present. A more efficient way of sharing information like this, including work arounds for bugs could be useful for future go-lives, helping the users and reducing the workload for the support staff. The hours the support desk is open were extended and responsibility for the support of applicants was handed over to Registry. In the Project Directors update to the Board in February 2009 it was reported that the response time to support calls was around 10 working days for applicants and around 5 working days for staff and that the length of these waiting times was causing frustration. Effort needs to be made to reduce these times if confidence in the system is to be maintained.

5.2.9 Conclusions

Although many measures have been taken to address communication issues since the initial observations were made, further work on developing effective communication strategies is required to improve and manage communication in the project as a whole. One of the key lessons learnt from Project Isodore was that communication cannot happen too often and that successful change happens because of effective communication. The current methods do not appear to fill all of the communication requirements for the project as a reliance on meetings and face to face communication cannot be maintained in the long term. In the future, the Change Team will have to move their focus to other areas of the project and will no longer be able to dedicate as

much time to the support of current users of the system. Without this support there is a fear that the users will revert to their old methods of working, using their old spreadsheets and developing ways to work around the system and new business processes. While meetings and face-to-face communication are important for building relationships, there is a need to support these relationships and continue to reinforce positive messages about the project as it progresses, encouraging people to continue to realise the benefits of the new system and the processes associated with it. An approach needs to be taken that is scalable and capable of supporting the increasing user base that will come with each go-live. It is not suggested that face-to- face communication and meetings be replaced but other mechanisms need to be put in place to supplement them if communication as a whole is to become more effective. While the Change and Communications Strategy document recognises many of the issues that need to be addressed for effective communication and to ensure change, in practice they do not appear to have been addressed to the extent necessary for success. Unlike the technical problems faced by the project, communication appears to be an area in which some assistance can be provided and an area in which any help provided and knowledge gained can be transferred to other large scale projects in other settings. After presenting a report of these findings to the Project Director and the Change and Communications Manager a meeting was held to discuss them. Their response and any attempts made to address some of the issues will be described in the next section.