Page Comparison

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Recommendation

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Risks & Benefits: With so many (5 + CDL) institutions going in the vanguard, the ICs observe that the major risk would be “biting off more than we can chew” in terms of resources and efforts, or that these efforts would push back our overall timeline. However. An alternate recommendation would be to ask one or more of the UC volunteers to step back from the vanguard, but asking one of them (for example, UCSF) to step back didn’t seem to buy us very much overall.

So, in discussion together and with Ex Libris, this seems unlikely: efforts that are made in the vanguard will make the final implementation stage go faster and easier, especially for those campuses moving to Alma/Primo for the first time. Also, allowing the majority of our “new” campuses to go in the vanguard allows us to identify hitches well in advance, again, hopefully shortening and easing the final implementation phase. Overall, the ICs felt that the benefits of the large vanguard outweighed the possible risks. Additionally, Ex Libris has committed their full support for this vanguard and in making sure the timeline is not at risk.

WG notes: Concur with erring on the side of inclusion, erring on the side of taking a risk earlier rather than later. ICs are empowered to change the slate as appropriate, should the need arise. Approved 4/17.

Background

The SILS team will recommend 5 institutions to be in the “Vanguard,” a group who will do a preliminary sandbox migration in June - Nov 2020. The deadline for choosing these vanguard institutions is the end of April 2020 at the latest, in order to prep for sandbox migration activities and kickoff starting in June.

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1. What is the time commitment for vanguard libraries?

   1. The vanguard period is June - November, 2020. The FTE estimate is unknown, but assumed to be somewhat intense, as the test run of the migration is expected to be a full scope.

2. What is the minimum number of vanguard campuses to be a useful proof of concept?

   1. Ex Libris recommends 3-4. What about 2?

   2. What are the pros and cons of 2,3,4?

3. Will the decisions made by the vanguard apply forever to the whole SILS cohort? Doesn’t that negate the whole point of the SILS shared governance decision-making? 

   1. The answer is no. But UC SILS needs to work with the vanguard and Ex Libris to explain and mitigate this risk. How?

4. What does “redo” mean? Will we really end up deleting all the test data and starting from scratch?

   1. That is one potential scenario, yes. Yes. Ex Libris has said that the test-vanguard environments will be deleted and redone during the implementation phase.

   2. The “real” test load for the SILS cohort will come in spring 2021 and while changes can be made at that point, at some point we have a “point of no return” where data should not be changed. 

5. Do vanguard campuses really have to do 3rd-party integrations testing? Everyone is already so busy.

   1. The ICs can work with Ex Libris to determine the appropriate MVP for the vanguard. If the point is to test everything possible, then we would lean toward yes, they have to test 3rd-party integrations. But if the MVP needs to be smaller, we can work to decide what items are top priority given the available resources.

6. How important is it to have already-live Alma/Primo campuses participate in the vanguard?

   1. If the point is to take advantage of a test run, then we should test as many factors as we think we can - including an already-live instance.

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