Efforts to enhance performance of the PeopleSoft and Web Registration systems have gathered steam and concrete progress is being made. Staff is addressing performance issues in several ways:
FINETUNING/FIXES:
Grad School admissions process: The U of Wisconsin has developed G-WIZ (pronounced GEE WHIZ), a front-end data entry program, to help speed up the entry of application for admissions data into PeopleSoft. Basically, staff enters the information into G-WIZ, which holds it until it is transferred to PeopleSoft at night. Grad School staff are very happy with the change; they have doubled the number of applications they are able to enter each day. Undergraduate admissions offices and professional schools are also looking at G-WIZ. Wisconsin gave us a very good deal and their technical staff helped us adapt the software to U of M needs.
Limiting number of Web users: The Web Team decreased the number of users able to access the Web at once from 300 to 180. Response time improved markedly, resulting in more users being able to access the system. Through the first two weeks of December, the Web processed a record number of cancel/adds--up to 25,000 in one day. During that time, response time improved significantly. The downside is that more students attempting to access the Web are getting "busy" signals.
Web/PeopleSoft Panel "Shared Pool" fix The first of several fixes that address this "shared pool" problem will go live Tuesday, January 18, if testing if testing continues to be successful.
PeopleSoft users will see a gradual improvement in panel response times as these fixes are implemented. More Web users should see more transactions occurring in acceptable ranges of time.
Implementations and upgrades: Fixes to the Peoplesoft software are made on a daily basis to fix broken processes and enhance performance. A December 22 implementation consisted of several fixes to both the Web and PeopleSoft. An upgrade to PeopleSoft 7.6 scheduled for February 28 promises more performance enhancements.
MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF PROGRESS
How will we know when we've succeeded? ESP sponsors and project directors are developing goals that will help measure our progress toward better performance. Examples of these goals might be "takes five seconds to add a class" or "complete batch jobs in less than ten minutes" or "perform a global search in less than 10 seconds."
Technical staff is installing such monitoring devices on servers and desktop computers. One measures the number of Web transactions and the average response time throughout the day. Another, called "End-to-End" monitoring, times a particular transaction from beginning to end. For example, a student financial user will be able to determine the amount of time it takes to update a student account from the time from the beginning of the electronic process through the completed transaction.
Such monitoring will be able to tell us that "65% of 'add a class' transactions took five seconds or less," or "70% of last night's batch processes ran less than ten minutes."
ESTIMATE OF SYSTEM CAPACITY, PEFORMANCE TUNING METHODOLOGIES.
Many HR staff are wondering if payroll implementation in May/June 2000, which will add more users to the PeopleSoft system, will make the performance worse.
We have asked Arthur Andersen Consulting to do a very focussed three-week assessment of our current PeopleSoft/Web systems, including infrastructure like the CPU, servers, networks, etc. Andersen has expert performance group that has been involved in several large PeopleSoft implementations, including a 200,000 employee implementation for New York State. Most of their work will focus on methodologies to improve problem student systems problems, which we can then apply to HR processes.
Here's what Andersen staff will be able to tell us:
HRMS staff are keeping an eye on the varied efforts toward performance improvement and continue to work hard toward the May/June 2000 payroll implementation.
EFFORTS WITH OTHER BIG 10 UNIVERSITIES WHO ARE PEOPLESOFT CUSTOMERS.
Last month the provosts or CIOs from eight Big 10 universities sent a letter to the PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway explaining their frustration and disappointment in the PeopleSoft products they had purchased. Their criticism included poor performance, the haphazard sending of "patches" ("fixes" or enhancements to the software) which solve one problem but may create another, and the quality of the software when it is shipped.
As a result, Conway is meeting with the provosts (or their designees) from eight other Big 10 schools on January 18. Executive Vice Provost Bruininks, Associate Vice President Kvavik, and Interim CIO Cawley are attending.
Questions or concerns? E-mail jposeley@umn.edu.