Meet the IRP Student Team – Ecosystem Delivery  

The Integrated Renewal Program – Student (IRP Student) refers to the renewal of the UBC Student Information System (SIS) that the University is undertaking. The renewed system will support UBC students in achieving their academic goals and create a better experience for all users through a new set of tools and new ways of working. 

IRP Student has eight core teams – Student Solution, Ecosystem Delivery, Transformation & Change Management, Security, Access, Data and Reporting, Technical Delivery, Solution Architecture, Quality Assurance, and Program Management Office. This series aims to explain each team, their objectives, and their role within the IRP Student program in terms you, our UBC community, will understand. 

It is important to understand that while Workday Student will replace UBC’s current SIS, we require an ecosystem approach as a holistic solution to achieve the IRP Student objectives, UBC's strategic goals, and business continuity. What is meant by an ecosystem approach? Ultimately, Workday Student will serve as the main platform for student administration and will integrate with external systems that are still needed to conduct operations at UBC. This “ecosystem” of functions will be comprised of existing systems at UBC and the introduction of new “point-solutions” or newly created systems.  

This is where the Ecosystem Delivery Team comes in. Their focus is on the required IT and business changes necessary to ensure as little disruption as possible to current UBC student administrative functions and processes, and that a comprehensive solution is provided that supports the entire student life cycle. 

We are moving from a customized, home-built system – the SIS - to Workday Student. As such, we have the ability to leverage what is already working well in the existing systems and connect them with Workday Student. The Ecosystem Delivery team’s primary objective is to ensure business continuity for UBC’s wider IT Ecosystem. To achieve this, we will be partnering with many IT and business stakeholders, ensuring we move forward on this delivery journey together.

 - Eddie Quinn, Associate Director – Ecosystem Delivery.  

 
The Ecosystem Delivery Team has worked to identify IT applications and systems that will be impacted with the introduction of Workday Student, as such there are a number of change types needed: 

Retrofit:  This involves more comprehensive IT changes, for example, code changes, to a legacy application or system so it can function with Workday Student. For example - the application "Person Hub" - UBC’s enterprise identity management solution which holds UBC's identity records. To account for Workday Student, code changes and integration changes will be made to include student information in Person Hub. 

Integration: This involves the creation, replacement, or upgrade of an existing legacy application or system which already is integrated with the current SIS. These applications or systems will need to be integrated to work in conjunction with Workday Student. For example, the “UBC Card” application currently receives information from the SIS. In the future, it needs to gather information from Workday Student. The Ecosystem Delivery team will be changing the integration in order for the application to be compatible with Workday Student.  

Sunset: This is when an application will be retired because Workday and/or other applications will provide its functionality in the future. More detail of Sunset Applications will be made known as the program continues.  

For more information about the Ecosystem Delivery team, visit the Student Ecosystem page on our website.   

*Reflecting on our experience so far in working with Workday and seeing how our design is shaping up, we realize that we have to embrace change and be confident in our ability to adapt. Workday Student, along with IRP Student’s functional requirements, are evolving quickly and this could mean that we may have to adapt our approach throughout the project timeline.