To: Student services
and human resources staff
From: From Robert Kvavik and Steve Cawley
Summary of discussion/action items
Seven Big 10 universities met with PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway and his senior management in Chicago on January 18. Mr. Conway had invited the schools to the meeting after the group had sent him a letter in November outlining problems they were having with the new software and offering to find joint solutions to current problems and to share ideas for future functionality of the software.
The universities, all of whom are implementing PeopleSoft, are members of the Committee for Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and first met last fall to discuss common concerns.
Executive Vice President and Provost Robert Bruininks moderated the daylong session and Cawley outlined the performance problems for the group.
We felt both PeopleSoft and CIC participants were solution-oriented. Generally the universities' participants reaffirmed the software's promise and utility.
TOPICS COVERED
Product quality/Cost of ownership.
Several university representatives noted that the quality problems present in the PeopleSoft process of developing and distributing fixes and patches were driving maintenance costs upward. PeopleSoft was committed to improving the testing of patches and to eliminate the practice of reposting patches after customers determine they don’t work. This should save universities from the cost and hassle of reapplying patches that should have worked in the first place. PeopleSoft indicated that many of these improvements to process were actually implemented in November and that we should be seeing the improvements immediately.
More timely delivery of regulatory releases.
PeopleSoft also agreed to a more timely release of important regulatory releases, to unbundle their regulatory releases from other patches and fixes, and to stop requiring Tools upgrades before regulatory releases are installed. This should allow for a more timely installation of regulatory releases.
Performance tuning strategy, testing on Oracle database
PeopleSoft agreed to develop a performance tuning strategy for the student product that would include testing on large Oracle databases (the common database product in use at the CIC schools). Representatives from Wisconsin volunteered their database-testing environment as a performance-testing environment for PeopleSoft. The CIC schools offered to systematically benchmark current performance characteristics and share the results with PeopleSoft in the hope that common problems and solutions would be uncovered. PeopleSoft also agreed to address a list of the top ten performance problems in the HR and Finance products. The universities will compile that list over the next couple of weeks.
PeopleSoft's future technical architecture.
PeopleSoft talked about an "open systems" approach to future product development, which means the company will make the business logic behind its system available to customers. As a result it will much easier for a university to build Web front-ends and other system add-ons and enhancements.
OTHER ACTION ITEMS:
Performance improvements will take time.
The meeting was productive but none of the action items are "silver bullets", which will result in instant performance improvements or overnight quality improvements. It will take considerable time and effort from both the universities and PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft was committed to addressing problems and was very open about their own struggles in developing a massively complex student administration product from the ground up. PeopleSoft assured the university representatives that they now had a proactive commitment to quality and were confident that future releases of their software would contain far fewer problems.
We welcome you questions and concerns. Contact us at kvavik@mailbox.mail.umn.edu or cawley@tc.umn.edu.