Steering Committee Meeting Minutes
May 14, 2010
9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Sunflower Room,  Docking State Office Bldg

The meeting of the Sunflower Project Steering Committee was called to order by Duane Goossen.  The following persons were in attendance:

Duane Goossen, Secretary of Administration
Joe Hennes, DISC
Carol Foreman, Kansas Department of Labor
Kent Olson, Sunflower Project Director
Gary Schneider, Sunflower Project Implementation Manager
Peggy Hanna, Deputy Project Director
Chris Howe, Division of Purchases
Mary Blubaugh, Board of Nursing
Alan Conroy, Legislative Research Department
Dennis Williams, Department of Corrections
Jim Conant, Department of Revenue
Judy Curtis, Department of Corrections
Elaine Frisbie, Division of the Budget
Jerry Sloan, Judicial Branch
Laura Howard, Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services
Alice Knatt, Department on Aging
Marcia Ferrill, Department of Transportation
Diane Duffy, Board of Regents
Becky Kersting, DISC
Paul Lavery, Accenture
Kirk Teal, Salvaggio Teal & Associates
Pam Fink, SMART Service Center Manager
Connie Guerrero, Enterprise Readiness Team Manager, Sunflower Project

I.       Project Status & Activities
The meeting began with Kent Olson, Sunflower Project Director, introducing Pam Fink.  Mr. Olson reported that Ms. Fink has been serving as the Central Systems Integration lead on the project and she will be managing the SMART Service Center.  Mr. Olson asked Steering Committee members to raise their hands if they are scheduled for training.  Several of the members raised their hands.  Mr. Olson stated that training is touching nearly everyone and we are about one third of the way through end-user training.  Evaluation results for SMART end-user training are very positive especially related to the State staff conducting the training. 

Project Timeline
Mr. Olson gave an update on the overall status of the activities being conducted by the project team.  As stated earlier end-user training is well underway.  Operational Readiness Testing (ORT) started this week and Peggy Hanna will give an update later in the presentation.  Mr. Olson stated the ORT team is sponsoring coordinated calls each day to provide agencies with information about batch jobs that ran the night before and procedures for how to correct errors.  There is one final data conversion meeting and we will be loading budgets soon.

Status of Defects and Fixes
Mr. Olson referenced a graphic that depicts that total number of defects that have been logged and fixed over time.  Mr. Olson reported the project was putting additional resources towards getting defects cleaned up and done.  The next graphic showed a breakdown of the defects by status and category.  Gary Schneider stated that over 1,600 defects have already been resolved.

Project Status and Activities
Kent Olson gave an update on the activities being performed by the four teams on the Sunflower Project. The Finance team led by Annette Witt has been working with the technical team on documenting and testing defects.  They are also involved in validating configuration values, regression testing and testing financial data in the data warehouse. Mr. Olson reported that Gary Schneider will be speaking about financial data that will be available in the warehouse and talking about the best way to get data out of SMART.  The Help Desk has been built out and the Finance team has been putting together job aides and process maps to help agency staff solve have the tools to solve their own problems.  Mr. Olson stated that he updated participants at the Change Agent Network (CAN) meeting yesterday that the travel regulations are final and an informational circular was released.  This information will help agencies develop their own internal travel policies.  He indicated that they need to do a travel handbook very soon.  The Finance team participated at the CAN meeting yesterday and gave updates on Accounts Receivable and Projects and Grants modules.  Mr. Olson stated reported the presentations had received positive feedback.  The team is also going to work with agencies on cash management and allocations.

The Enterprise Readiness team is working to finalize the remaining web-based training courses.  Web-based and instructor led training are in progress.  Help Desk staff members have been trained and the Help Desk went live to coincide with Operational Readiness Testing.  The Change Agent Network meeting was held yesterday and the May newsletter will be released next week.  The team has also been involved in agency readiness meetings to discuss the go-live readiness approach.  

The Technical team continues working on fixing defects.  They have been working on completing performance testing and fine tuning to make things run faster.   They are also working on developing agency reports and supporting ORT using a production support model including staff from DISC.  Mr. Olson stated this is a good time for the project to begin thinking about how functional staff will work with DISC.  The security team is working on loading security profiles for approximately 5,000 end-users.                

The Central Systems team has been working with staff in the Division of Budget on testing the extracts from SMART to IBARS.  The SHARP team has been testing regents’ payroll files as part of ORT.

Next, Mr. Olson gave an update on several other activities that are in progress.  The build out of the SMART Service Center is underway on the first floor of the Landon State Office Building.  Employees from the Division of Facilities Management are in the process of moving out of space so additional configuration activities can occur.  Mr. Olson reported that thirty-two agencies will be utilizing some portion of the services being provided by the SMART Service Center. Knowledge transfer is occurring as state team members prepare for the departure of Accenture team members.  The overall size of the project team is decreasing as additional Accenture team members roll off and state team members are assuming their tasks.

Setting Expectations
Mr. Olson reported that he covered the next few slides at the CAN meeting yesterday.   He stated that while the project has done well overall the following slides cover areas where the project has not been able to completely meet agency expectations.  Several agencies indicated they would have liked to have additional workflow configuration options available to them.  Mr. Olson reported the project couldn’t just replicate what is being done today and that the configurations being deployed initially have to work for 108 agencies.  Agencies have also reported that some of the training requirements for supervisory roles have been too excessive.  The curriculum is being reviewed for areas where it can be scaled back.   

The Project also received feedback from agencies that they would have liked to have a fully configured environment including agency values, workflow and security to practice end-to-end transaction processing.  Mr. Olson stated that configuring and maintaining the multitude of environments being used by the project team takes a great deal of complexity and time and it was not feasible to add another environment. Another area of agency concern is related to the inability of the data warehouse to easily combine data from different areas into one report.  The project team is working on enhancing several key subject areas and they will be released incrementally after go-live.

Mr. Olson stated that despite all of the hours the team has spent on testing things will go wrong and the Help Desk will be in place to support agencies experiencing problems with SMART.  Agencies and the SMART project team will need to work together to address issues and agencies will be the first line of support for their end-users.

Mr. Olson pointed out that the last slide in this section was shared at one of the earlier Change Agent Meetings. The slide depicts the change curve that depicts an end-users ability to achieve acceptance and regain productivity upon implementation of a major change.  Mr. Olson reminded Steering Committee members to be aware of each other and those around us so we can help keep each other moving through the change commitment curve.   

II. Change Control
Peggy Hanna gave members an update on recent modification requests that were presented to the Sunflower Project Change Control Board.  She reported there were a number of Change Requests (CR’s) since the last Steering Committee meeting.  The project received credits for some reports. The dollars are reflected in the available Mod Bucket that was increased from around $5,000 to $21,472.80.  All new CR’s are being charged against the Reserve Pool fund.  Ms. Hanna went over a few of the CR’s approved during the past month.  CR 168 resulted from a request from KPERS to have the ACH payments to their retirees indicate they are a payment being made by KPERS instead of the standard wording that will state they are paid by SMART.  CR 171 is to prevent separate zero net checks from printing when the check detail description exceeds more than 14 lines.  The project team felt strongly these zero net checks would create a negative image of the SMART system. CR 170 is for payments from SHARP payroll that need to come out of the Accounts Payable module.  In order to accomplish this payment process a custom payment addenda record is needed for child support payments. Ms. Hanna reminded Steering Committee members that they pre-approved CR 150 for $60,000 to automate the process to monitor appropriated funds.  The SMART team will start out with a manual process and then move to an automated process when the SMART stabilizes.

III. SMART Cutover Strategy
Ms. Hanna informed members that we are now in the cutover process and things are going well.  SHARP will cutover beginning the weekend of June 19th.  STARS and SOKi will be taken down on July 6th which is the last day for on-line transactional entry in those systems.

She provided members a brief overview of the distinct stages that make up the cutover process.  The Performance Testing stage identifies batch and on-line processes that do not complete in an acceptable time.  This stage is on-going through the end of May.  Ms. Hanna reported that a job that is executed for the State Treasurer every day was running as long as five hours and after performance tuning it takes around two minutes.  The End-User testing stage is complete. Ms. Hanna stated that the end-user testing stage involved thirty agencies that executed four hundred and eighty six test scripts in twelve days.  She thanked all of the agencies involved in this stage and indicated this was an exciting opportunity for agencies to get their hands on the software. 

The Dress Rehearsal stage included a full sequence of cutover activities executed in the same time frames as they will be in production.  Lessons learned from this stage have been built into the cutover checklist.  Ms. Hanna reported that agencies and central processing teams participated in this stage. Operational Readiness Testing (ORT) began on May 10th and simulates operations in a production environment including the execution of the daily and nightly batch cycles.  Ms. Hanna stated the SHARP team will be running the full two-week payroll cycle.  There was initially only one Regents Institution identified to participate in testing the payroll process.  However, the other six Regents decided to also participate in this testing process.  Ms. Hanna reported the testing started out a little bumpy due to some issues with operations and the automated batch schedule.  She indicated the team and agencies participating in ORT participated in daily calls to discuss what is happening.  Deployment is the last stage of cutover and includes the final set up of the SMART system.  Deployment begins on June 1st and runs through July 30th.

The next slide provided the due dates for agency submission of data conversion files.  Ms. Hanna pointed out that Asset files are due on June 16th.  She stated this is a big deal for the State.  She pointed out that agencies should especially verify that data associated with their capital assets, buildings and land related assets is accurate.  The Division of Accounts and Reports is in the process of notifying agencies about known asset data errors.  This will be the first time the state has had a central repository of assets and we need to be able to give a good list to the legislature.  Ms. Hanna stated there will be one final Conversion meeting on June 14th from 2:00 to 3:00 in the Docking State Office Building auditorium. 

Ms. Hanna reported there will be two final conversions that will run post go-live.  The Division of Information Systems and Communications will be converting pending items on July 16th and the SMART system will close at 2:00 p.m. on July 16th for the conversion of STARS balances and encumbrances. 

Ms. Hanna went over the key dates for agency-facing interfaces.  Beginning June 7th the daily execution of the INF01 – Vendor Download will begin.  Ms. Hanna stated that agencies that previously loaded this file will need to delete the data and do a full replace.  The Division of Accounts and Reports will start doing dual entry of new vendors in both STARS and SMART until July 1 when agencies can begin adding new vendors in SMART.  The daily execution of the INF15 – Chartfield extract will begin on Jun 8th.  This will be the only way agencies will get chartfield values.  The first INF42 – Time and Labor interface will begin on June 28th.  Ms. Hanna stated that all other interfaces will begin on July 1st. 

The Division of Accounts and Reports issued informational circular 10-a-014 which provided dates for closing Fiscal Year 2010 transactions and beginning Fiscal Year 2011.  Randy Kennedy is the contact for closing FY 2010 transactions in STARS and SOKI.  Agencies should contact the SMART Help Desk with questions about opening FY 2011. Ms. Hanna reminded Steering Committee members that all Fiscal Year 2011 transactions must be processed in SMART.  Fiscal Year 2010 transactions must be processed in STARS.  STARS or SOKI will not accept Fiscal Year 2011 transactions.  STARS and SOKI will both close on July 6th.  However, there will be inquiry access to SOKI through December. 

IV. Remaining Scope, Data Warehouse, Agency Reporting Needs, Executive Dashboards, End User Testing, Production Support Model and Agency Interactions Test Sequence & Schedule
Gary Schneider pointed to a slide that contains all of the test stages. He stated that he just wanted to point out all of the work that has been done on testing.  This has been a tremendous effort and is still on-going.  Mr. Schneider stated that Operational Readiness Testing has two more weeks to go.  He stated he would give us a ‘C’ for work done so far during this stage.  The project team will talk on Monday to determine if additional agencies will be added to the testing process.

Remaining Scope Elements in Design or Build
Mr. Schneider reported on scope elements that are in design or build.  He reported that several new (minor) CRs have been added with most of the work being done by the State.   Additional reports for agencies will continue to be built and tested using State resources over the next two months.  There are also two functional modifications and one report in the review cycle.

Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Test
Mr. Schneider provided and overview of the Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Test.  He reported that this testing started a little late but we are near to having the close out meeting.  The vendor is currently in the process of reviewing code modification to look for holes in code that would expose vulnerabilities in SMART.  The vendors have already reported that the State has one of the ‘tightest’ network security environments that they have seen and so far no “show stoppers” have been found. 

End User Testing
As mentioned earlier End User Testing is complete and was conducted for four weeks in April for SMART and SHARP.  The testing was conducted in a lab and included participation by twenty-nine agencies.  Mr. Schneider pointed out that the graphic on the slide shows the number of scripts that were executed by agency. 

A total of seventy-eight defects were identified and logged by agency testers.  State team members were in the test lab to support agency testers.  Mr. Schneider indicated it was a good comfort to see the state team be able to support agencies.
 
Reporting – SMART
Reporting in SMART will be accomplished with several reporting tools and options.  Mr. Schneider stated that he wanted everyone to understand there are a lot of ways to get data out of SMART.  He provided an overview of the various methods which includes extracting data from the production system via on-line inquiries, custom and delivered reports. Mr. Schneider reported that data from the SMART production system will be real-time the same day.  The other option for extracting data is from the data warehouse.  Mr. Schneider is looking at conducting some data access workshops to help agencies understand the various options for extracting data from SMART.

Data Warehouse
Mr. Schneider went over the state expectations associated with the data warehouse.  He indicated there were three areas 1) being able to provide agencies with ad-hoc access to all of their transactional data; 2) the capability to provide analytics; and 3) the ability to create executive and management dashboards.  Mr. Schneider reported that the project team is finding the first area the most difficult to achieve as the data warehouse is not suited for pulling transactional data.  The next slide shows how the data from the SHARP and SMART transactional systems are extracted, transformed and loaded into the data warehouse.

The project is going to create three to five enhanced subject areas.  These custom subject areas will provide consolidated subject areas to make the tool more functional. Jerry Sloan inquired about what type of data will be in the data warehouse.  Mr. Schneider reported that the data warehouse will only include SMART data.  STARS ad-hoc data will be available for six months after go-live.

Mr. Schneider reported that the estimated cost for the three subject areas is approximately $141K.  CR 163 approved at the last Steering Committee meeting for $50K along with another $55K that was not spent on other approved CR’s will be put towards the custom subject areas.  In addition, Accenture is contributing $50K.  Judy Curtis asked what three subject areas will be implemented.  Mr. Schneider reported the first subject area will be Accounts Payable followed by Accounts Receivable.  He indicated that Annette Witt is making a decision on the third subject area which will be for General Ledger or Purchasing.  The first custom subject area will be available at the end of July when the data warehouse is deployed.  Mr. Schneider stated that Oracle confirmed that customers do modify the delivered subject areas to better fit their organizations' ways of doing business.  He reported that Oracle will be sending their data warehouse ‘rock star’ for a visit to assist the project team. 

Examples of the types of data initially available in the warehouse were discussed.  Mr. Schneider stated that the State will have to decide if we want to add some additional data marts to the HR subject areas that will initially start out with three delivered subject areas.  Diane Duffy asked how close the three custom subject areas will get us towards achieving the three objectives discussed earlier.  Mr. Schneider reported that the three custom subject areas will get us about 80% of what we need. Kirk Teal reported that he has been on approximately four projects that included implementation of the data warehouse and that the State of Kansas project has gone farther than any of the other customers.

The next slide displayed by Mr. Schneider included examples of agency executive dashboards that will be created as starting points for agencies.  Mr. Schneider stated that agencies can take these delivered dashboards and use them as starting points.  He stated he was hopeful that he would be able to have a prototype dashboard next month.

Reporting Strategy & Approach
Mr. Schneider reported the Sunflower Project Team has met with all agencies to review critical reporting gaps.  He stated that approximately thirty additional reports are scheduled to be developed which will place additional unplanned work on the technical team.  He indicated he won’t feel better until all agency reports are done. 

Production Support Model
The State has been working on the development of a production support model.  The State will need a process to make decisions on other enhancements that will need to be added to SMART.  Also, since the SHARP and SMART systems are so tightly integrated there needs to be a process for the teams to work together to resolve incidents. A governance structure will also need to be in place.  A diagram of the transition production support process was displayed.  Mr. Schneider directed everyone to look at the center area of the diagram.  He indicated this section is for dealing with unplanned incidents that are identified by end-users of SMART.

Agency Interactions
Mr. Schneider gave an update on recent agency interactions.  He reported that the project team has successfully completed two weekly parallel tests and one monthly parallel test with KPERS.  There will also be an additional monthly parallel test during ORT.  The project team recently met with KDOT to discuss how to resolve their reporting gaps and with Department on Aging, the Kansas Health Policy Authority and the Department of Labor to discuss completion of their configurations for allocations.

V. SMART Service Center
Pam Fink, SMART Service Center Manager, started out her update on the SMART Service Center by stating that the great thing about SMART and the data warehouse is they all come together in the Service Center.  She indicated the Service Center is filling a need for small agencies and was developed as a result of lessons learned from other similar size implementations.   Ms. Fink stated the Service Center is a ‘safety net’ to help small agencies who may not be able to get their staff trained.  To date a total of thirty-two agencies are participating in the Service Center.  A total of twenty agencies are fully participating including the State Library, Board of Pharmacy and Board of Accountancy.  Another eleven agencies are participating in selected modules such as the Animal Health Department which is having the Service Center handle entry of their assets as they have only a couple. 

Ms. Fink reported the SMART Service Center is fully staffed with twelve employees bringing together staff members from the project and existing staff from the Division of Accounts and Reports.  A Service Center kick-off was held on May 4th and approximately 10-12 agencies participated.  During the transition period the SMART Service Center will be co-located with the project team and then will move to their permanent location on the first floor of the Landon building later this fall and will include staff from the Division of Purchasing and the Kansas Highway Patrol. 

VI. Training Update
Connie Guerrero informed Steering Committee members that end user training session evaluation results have consistently been averaging 4 out of a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest.  Ms. Guerrero pointed out the metric related to the evaluation of the instructor and showed that is it ranked higher than the other areas being measured.  She stated this is a testament to the quality of state staff that agencies volunteered to be trainers and drivers.  The slide also includes specific comments from a training session to demonstrate how participants in the same class can feel completely different about the training experience. 
Ms. Guerrero reported that nearly all of the web-based training materials have been completed.  She estimated that the remaining five web-based training courses will be completed in the next two weeks.  

VII. SMART Support & Agency Updates
Connie Guerrero informed Steering Committee members the SMART Help Desk went live on Monday, May 10th to coincide with the start of Operational Readiness Testing.  Help Desk analysts will be available from 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday.  The hours of operation will be expanded as we get closer to go-live.   The Agency Readiness Liaisons are being transited to the Help Desk now since they were assigned to be permanent members of the help desk at go-live.

Ms. Guerrero stated that the project team is also working towards phasing out the sunflowerfms@da.ks.gov email address.  She reported that this email address should only be used for role mapping updates, go-live readiness checklists and if specifically directed to in Sunflower Project emails. Going forward all questions should be directed to the SMART Help Desk.  Ms. Guerrero pointed to a graphic of the home page of the SMART website.  She informed Steering Committee members that a link to access the knowledge base is accessible by all end-users at the top of the page.  The link to access ServiceDesk the software being used by agency SMART Help Desk contacts to log incidents is located in the center of the page.

The remaining two Change Agent Network Meetings are being held in June on Monday’s from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.  The meetings will be held on June 7th and June 21st at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.  The final conversion meeting will be held on June 14th in the Docking State Office Building Auditorium from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m.

Ms. Guerrero reminded Steering Committee members to submit their Agency Go-Live Readiness checklists every two weeks or upon completion of major milestones.   

Next Steering Committee Meeting
The next Steering Committee meeting will be on Friday, June 11, 2010 from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. in Room 106 of the Landon State Office Building. The meeting was adjourned.