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April Showers Bring May Milestones

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Our April showers came in the way of website refresh “go-lives” with eight departments giving the green light to push their sites to production. April was, by far, our busiest month between intake meetings, site reviews and final edits.

As of the last day of April, we have managed to refresh/review 58 departmental or group sites (some with multiple subsites).

We’ve also passed the halfway point in terms of refreshed content and are sitting at 60 percent completed on the website refresh meter. How does that translate in page numbers, you ask? It puts us past the 2,500-page mark!

In terms of our big buckets, we’re nearing completion of work on the Division of Enrollment Management and Student Services (down to our last three programs going live in May), and we’ve made significant headway into the academic areas and college sites. Soon, we will go live with the College of Arts and Sciences and their departments of Math, Philosophy and Religion, Women’s Studies and Social, Cultural and Justice Studies.

By the end of May we will add the College of Engineering and Computer Science to this list and will have started OPEIR and the College of Health, Education and Professional Studies. Even with end-of-semester tasks, your colleagues are pushing ahead on this University initiative!

A quick thank you also is in order for all of you in the departments and colleges spending countless hours on reviewing, providing edits, deleting old content and generally jumping over puddles to bring the UTC website up to date to support student success.

I predict a bright and sunny future with the goal of completing the website refresh by Labor Day.  And I don’t need Punxsutawney Phil for that forecast.

Spring Cleaning Sparks Joy

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I dedicate this post to Donny Behneman as my latest mantra has become “Does this webpage spark joy?” Or a variation, “Does this PDF spark joy?” Or “Does this photo spark joy?”

As we work our way through the UTC website, one topic in each intake meeting has to do with a review of pages that can potentially be deleted. Old, outdated content contributes, in large part, to the refresh effort. Schedules from 2014, a PDF form from 2011, a photo of a student who has long since graduated all come to light during the refresh process.

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Let’s Go To Camp

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Remember the summer days when time was spent in the great outdoors chasing friends through the woods and discovering new worlds? Or perhaps, summer camp might have been classes at a museum filled with art or at the zoo tending to the elephants. Camps and campers typically equate to fun, summertime activity.

June 7 and 8 will provide an opportunity to attend another type of camp…”Drupal Camp.” Rather than spending time in the great outdoors, the local Drupal community will set up camp at Chattanooga State to share in the adventures of using, programming and learning about all things Drupal.

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Time Marches On

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How do we predict how long it will take to <fill in the blank>? When it comes to initiatives or activities that have been done before, experience plays a pivotal role in determining outcome. On the other hand, luck may play just as much of a role in the end.

I’ve managed dozens and dozens of projects over the years. Based on my years of experience, I should be able to more or less accurately predict a project’s timeline. I also know that every project is different and, while I’m pretty good at identifying risk factors at the start of the project, there will always be something that comes up that no one thought of before. A bit like Murphy’s Law, but we’ll call it Whipple’s Hypothesis for now.

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To Train or Not to Train, Is Not the Question

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Having worked as a trainer and educator for a large part of my professional and volunteer life, I can say, with 100 percent certainty, that we all need a little training now and then.

It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained. -Queen Elizabeth II

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Help! I Need Somebody, Not Just Anybody!

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I need somebody
(Help) not just anybody
(Help) you know I need someone
(Help)

Welcome to your first day of Spring term 2019. Before you even refill your coffee cup, you notice there are some changes needed on your departmental web site that just have to be fixed. Right. Now.

You could use some help from the UTC Web Team but aren’t sure how to contact them other than calling one of the team members and hoping their voicemail isn’t full or to find out they left the country and haven’t returned from break.

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A Look Back…and Forward

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As this will be the last post before Winter Break and the end of 2018, let’s take a look back over the last several months. Pour yourself a virtual toddy, throw a log on the fire and reflect on what has been accomplished.

Website Refresh: We have refreshed content, revitalized pages and transformed sites across the student-facing galaxy this fall. By the time you read this, these pages will be showing off their fresh new look and feel: [Read more…]

Training Time

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In order to form a more perfect website, the UTC web team and colleagues from across campus, including the Library and Information Technology, will be participating in a series of training workshops.

Lee Walker, a local Drupal expert with Code Journeymen, kicks off the workshops this week, Dec. 10-14.  Lee’s workshops are intended for those with technical skill sets and who will be supporting the Drupal content migration and managing the system and coding environments.

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It Always Starts Small

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It’s called Scope Creep. It happens when someone says ‘we need a new dishwasher’ and seven months later, after walls have been removed, new cabinets have been set in place and new appliances hooked up, that you realize the $900 dishwasher cost way more and took a lot more time. Classic scope creep!

Most project managers recognize scope creep is happening when someone says, ‘Well, while we’re doing this anyway, let’s <fill in the blank>.’

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