[Campus Notice] Recalibrating Our GSMS Strategy: Next Steps and Timeline Update

[UCR Information Technology Solutions]

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Dear Graduate Student Affairs Partners,

Thank you for the detailed and vital feedback shared during your recent
meeting. Hearing directly from those "on the ground" about the challenges
with financial offer templates, data population errors, and the overall
transparency of the rollout has been invaluable.

Your insights have led us to a clear conclusion: for the Graduate Student
Management System (GSMS) to be a success, we must prioritize system
reliability and data integrity over rapid feature deployment.
Your Feedback in Action

Based on your feedback, we are adjusting our project approach in the
following ways:

   -

   Stabilization First: We are pivoting our immediate focus toward a
   comprehensive audit of the system’s core logic and data population errors,
   prioritizing issue resolution and stabilization of the admissions module.
   -

   Enhanced Status Tracking: A primary takeaway from the feedback we
   received was the need for clearer communication regarding what is "ready
   for use." In response, we are launching a Template Readiness Tracker. The
   purpose is to provide real-time visibility of production-ready templates.
   -

   Expanded Opportunities for Collaboration and Support: Our expanded
   Office Hours are a dedicated space for you to receive hands-on support and
   voice concerns directly to the project’s functional and technical experts.
   To help ensure we meet key milestones, we ask all partners to take
   advantage of these sessions to vet their workflows and confirm system
   readiness.
   -

   Ensuring Every Voice is Heard: To get this right, we need to make
   certain that our departmental experts are at the table. We kindly request
   your support with the following:
   -

      Please help us validate our list of GSMS representatives to ensure
      the right voices are in the room.
      -

      We are also expanding our hands-on sessions. Please join to help
      validate that your department’s unique needs fit within the new, shared
      standards we’ve committed to as a campus. This ensures your
local knowledge
      is the foundation of our shared tool.

Timeline Recalibration for Long-term Success

To ensure the system is stable for the critical February 20th recruitment
milestone and beyond, we are adjusting the timeline for the full deployment
of GSMS. Recalibrating the schedule ensures that each phase of the rollout
meets our standard of quality by preventing the rushing of remaining
modules, which risks compounding existing issues.

We value the time and effort you have already invested in this transition. This
shift in our approach is designed to ensure that the system ultimately
serves as a tool that simplifies your work, rather than a hurdle you have
to navigate.

We remain on track to release Employment for testing at the end of March
and will share a revised timeline for Financial in the next 30 days. As
always, you can contact the project team directly at gsmsfeedback at ucr.edu.

Best regards,

Teri Eckman

Executive Director for Student Information Systems



Information Technology Solutions

Computing & Communications Building

900 University Ave.

Riverside, CA 92521

951-827-4848 | its.ucr.edu
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