Campus Financial Systems for the Future

IV: Determining Business and Technology Requirements

Creating a Requirements Document and Finalizing the Project Plan

The final tasks of the project management team in this phase of the project are to create (1) a requirements document that describes, at a fairly high level of detail, the functionality and systems needs that must be supported by the technology solution, and includes a summary of the major strategic directions articulated by the steering committee, and (2) a revised and more detailed project scope and budget, building on the initial plan described in Chapter 3.

The requirements document will be the formal articulation of the needs assessment that has been carried out by the business process and technology teams, incorporating recommendations from the business process evaluations (which will provide information on required and desired functionality) and the technology evaluation (which will provide information on systems requirements and preferences). For example, the document should include:

a description of the functionality that must be provided,
a list of technical requirements that must be met (particular hardware platforms, databases, developer tools to be used, need for security management, client/server expectations, etc.),
timing constraints in the implementation (e.g., systems that are no longer supportable require replacement first),
depth and breadth of functionality (e.g., level of complexity in constructing the chart of accounts, amount of distributed activity that must be supported in payroll processing),
financial constraints or considerations, and
description of implementation support needs and ongoing maintenance/upgrade needs.

The requirements document should also include a realistic assessment of the workforce skills available in these areas of the institution, and an identification of areas where the needs assessment may be flawed due to lack of workforce expertise in providing such information. It will fall to the project management team to incorporate its knowledge of the workers involved to ensure that the needs assessment is accurate, and that the resulting solution will be a reasonable and responsible system for the institution. A clear analysis of what resources the institution can provide during both the implementation and maintenance stages will be key to the selection team being able to make an informed evaluation of the available alternatives.

The greatest risk in this phase is to be unrealistic about what level of resources and skills are available to support the proposed change - build, buy, and partner options each require differing levels of expertise, and differing levels of institutional involvement in order to be successful, so it is critical that there be a good fit between the final choice and the available expertise.

The project manager is responsible for circulating the requirements document to the various project teams for confirmation and, thereafter, to the steering committee for approval. Once approved, the requirements document will represent the blueprint for the solution that will be selected and implemented in the next phases of the project.

The project scope and budget revision should follow the pattern of the initial project plan, now including the additional work that has been done on business process evaluation and the opportunities these present for institutional change; the evaluation of technology solutions and what they will mean for the institution's ability to introduce change; and a revised and enhanced resources estimate, based on a better understanding of what current staff, space, and equipment will be most affected by the change, and what the possible range of costs of the technology enhancements will be. Although this document cannot yet include vendor-specific information as to costs for purchase of licenses, support, and so forth, preliminary estimates of the range of such costs should also be prepared, in order to enhance the evaluation process for the RFP stage of work.

This revised plan will need to be submitted to the steering committee to ensure that the evolving vision of priorities, needs, and available resources continues to fit within the broad outline of the steering committee's original recommendations. Conversely, if the additional work by the technology and business process teams has brought the project team to a new understanding of what the primary needs are, and/or what the necessary resources would be to meet those needs, this information needs to be shared with the project leaders, and the project as a whole will need to be reassessed before further work is done.

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