IC Vanguard Institutions Choice

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Recommendation

The Implementation Coordinators (IC’s) recommend the following 5 institutions plus the California Digital Library (CDL) for vanguard: 

1. UCSB (Alma / Primo)

2. UCB + NRLF (Millennium)

3. UCLA + SRLF (Voyager)

4. UCSF (Millennium)

5. UCSD (Millennium)

6. CDL (central records management, SFX, SCP workflows)

Pertinent Discussion

The recommended slate of vanguard institutions includes a range of libraries, large and small, both the Northern and Southern Regional Library Facilities (NRLF and SRLF), as well as existing Alma / Primo campuses plus “new” ILS users. The ICs feel this will give us a very representative sample of everything the UC requires and should surface any problems early.

All Vanguards were vetted with their respective campus leadership and locally approved.

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. 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.

The benefit of being a vanguard institution is the opportunity to do a low-risk migration that will surface problems and issues that can then be addressed during the subsequent implementation phase. Essentially, it’s an “opportunity to fail” and to gain real information on the state of data, policies, workflows, etc. The challenge of being a vanguard institution is the need to do a rapid migration on an advanced timeline to gain that benefit.

The vanguard: Test run and establish the Network Zone (5 campuses)

The Vanguard phase is where 5 institutions go first to do a preliminary migration “proof of concept” in a sandbox environment, the outcome of which is “lessons learned” that would inform the rest of the migration. Vanguard institutions do NOT go live after this phase, but would have an opportunity to redo any work and will go live with the UC SILS cohort at the summer 2021 go-live date. A SILS Network Zone will also be established at this point, with data from the vanguard. During this phase, vanguard staff will receive a kickoff call, preliminary training, will do a test data load and review, will do third party integrations work, workflow analysis, and workshops / certification.

Ex Libris details the vanguard phase as follows:

The vanguard precedes the full implementation phases and is represented at a high level within the ‘Define’ and ‘Build’ stages above. It is essentially a run of the implementation without the Deploy. The goal of the vanguard phase is to provide the UC libraries with a representative environment in order to establish a solid baseline of product knowledge in preparation for the initial configuration and migration to a shared environment and allow already live and new Alma libraries to collaborate in a test environment.

The major areas of focus may include:

Understand the Alma data model to make informed migration decisionsUnderstand Alma functionality and workflows to make informed configuration decisions and provide a baseline for collaborative network planning, including: Purchasing and payment workflows User synchronization and management E-resource activation and maintenance Fulfillment and delivery workflows Integration planning and preparationCollaborative network planning: Understand Alma collaborative model to prepare for shared policy and configurationPlanningUnderstand the Network Zone migration methodology to plan an effective migration to a shared data environmentWorkflows. Understand key Alma workflows to make informed migration and configuration decisions:Managing e-resources centrallyCoordinated loading of metadata feeds for membersConsortial resource sharing

We will perform an initial load of data from up to four representative (vanguard) institutions and create a network zone. During this period, the libraries will have access to the Alma functional training pre-recorded sessions and a standard Alma sandbox. At this time weekly project status/functional Q&A sessions between the UC libraries and Ex Libris implementation teams will begin and continue throughout the project.

The vanguard phase period will last approximately six months and at the end of that period lessons learned will be gathered and these outcomes will be applied to the full implementation period. The project manager and team assigned for the vanguard phase will be the same team that will share responsibility with the UC team for the full implementation.

Implications of the choice of vanguard:

• Ex Libris suggests 3-4 campuses with a max of 5 campuses, with a spread of “big” and “small”, and including at least one campus already on Alma / Primo.

• The Network Zone would be built from those vanguard campus data, 

  • Ideally the vanguard campuses would have good clean records. (Note: this is connected to but not strictly dependent on our choice of “Network Zone master record” which is a separate process / decision)

  • Maria Bunevski (Ex Libris Onboarding Lead): “For me, knowing more about what the Network Zone would look like should be weighted higher than trying to be representative [in the choice of vanguard institutions.]” (conversation 1/30/20)

• Vanguard campuses would have the benefit of a “second chance” to redo anything during the main implementation phase. 

  • Is this an argument for complex campuses first, to work out their issues ahead of time?

• Vanguard campuses would have to take on the work: 

  • Example: hosting webinars: Vanguard Hosted Webinars and Q&A

  • PASCAL writes: “The criteria from Ex Libris included a number of factors such as a library’s current system, being a stand-alone system or part of a shared system, collection and staff size, third-party integrations, data being migrated, and multiple libraries within the institution. In addition, the Shared LSP Steering Committee worked to include different types of institutions from those that volunteered. The balance and diversity of these libraries is important, but equally important is the willingness of the Vanguard libraries to provide guidance and support for the other participants during full migration.” (http://pascalsc.libguides.com/blog/seven-libraries-selected-to-participate-in-vanguard-testing-phase-for-alma-primo-migration)

  • Vanguard campuses must be willing and able to meet the “rapid migration” test load deadline around August 2020, and to develop testing procedures for reviewing that data in the fall.

  • Vanguard campuses should be willing and able to serve as examples for the rest of the UC Libraries - supported by the SILS infrastructure (i.e. communications group, training group)

Ultimate outcome: “lessons learned”

There are a number of criteria by which to select vanguard institutions - which ones do we think would provide the best outcome for “lessons learned”? 

Questions to consider / FAQ (in progress)

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. 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.

Have a question? Send an email to the Implementation Coordinators with "vanguard choice" in the subject line: SILS-IC-L@listserv.ucop.edu (PM will respond to all questions.)

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