STEPS Team Celebrates, College Wins!

Ice cream and congratulations greeted the members of the STEPS project team last week as they gathered to celebrate the very successful completion of Phase II of the project and recharge for the next phase. Phase II included 17 different projects, each designed to tap into PeopleSoft's current functionality to improve and enhance students' experience and resulting in several "quick wins."
 
Overall, the projects will save 25,000 staff hours that will be re-directed to new initiatives or meet unmet demand.  The changes will offer enhanced functionality in more than 60,000 online experiences for students. Eleven of the 17 projects were designed to deliver a new college-wide process that will optimize resources and respond to the changing needs of our students and our community.
 
People from across the college were involved, and each project included a business owner, team leader and team with the help and support of internal Madison College subject matter experts and consultant partners from CedarCrestone, a provider of managed and optimization services for PeopleSoft software products.
 
The 17 projects are listed below. See the STEPS Quick Win Project Team List for individual project team members. We are in the process of sharing more information on individual projects through Matters. Projects already discussed include links to Matters articles. Watch for more soon.

1. Non-program Intake Management
2. Veterans' Benefit Management
3. Award Announcement and Acceptance
4. Financial Aid One-term Processing
5. Title IV Refund Processing
6. Improve Checklist SQR
7. Admissions 3C Triggers
8. International Admissions
9. Certificate Management
10. Transfer Credit Hour Equivalency
11. Waitlist Management
12. Online Graduation
13. Unfulfilled Pre-requisite Identification
14. Orientation Management
15. Enhance Support for Students Changing Programs
16. Improved Visibility of Test Scores
17. At-risk Student Integration

Thanks to STEPS Program Director Diane Walleser and the STEPS Program Team: Marty Crabbs, Jennifer Hoege, Lori Sebranek, Igor Steinberg, Reggie Mosher, Ali Zarrinnam, Sharon Kelley and Kelly Schulte; and to Paul Martin and his team at CedarCrestone. Special thanks goes to Becky Baumbach, vice president of Strategic Advancement, for creating the STEPS vision and paving the way for the program development.   
 
Looking ahead to Phase III, the team will begin work on implementation of value-added projects with an upgrade of PeopleSoft 9.0 starting in July. Phase III will last about a year and include improvements in curriculum governance, business intelligence, room scheduling, imaging and more. In addition to direct results for our students, STEPS' goal is to build and refine our internal business process and project management skills to strengthen our ability to take on future projects without relying on outside resources.
 
STEPS stands for Student Transformation Effective Practices and Systems.