3.1. Define the Problem
The first step in developing your high-level plan for change is defining the problem and articulating a definition of your challenge for change, including drivers to help determine where you need to go. This process is typically very short-term (a few days to a few weeks) and
- lays out a description of the issues or vignettes describing current problems, potential benefits, and desired functionality, and
- garners stakeholder commitment to move forward with a more detailed project study.
You should be able to succinctly articulate the problem definition by the end of this step, otherwise the project will be much more difficult.
Once an authentication problem definition is agreed upon, the next stage is to determine who will write the guiding principles, perform the inventory, and develop the high-level direction. You will need to gather broad input for
- determining the economic costs and benefits of the alternative approaches,
- ensuring the solutions are feasible,
- increasing the likelihood of buy-in to the final plan, and
- changing established business processes as gaps become identified.
Consider including the following roles in your discussions:
- Data stewards - Human Resources, Registrars, Finance, Library
- Policy stewards - Provost, COO, EVP
- Process stewards - CFO/COO and related business offices
- Application and service stewards - alumni, registrars, admissions, financial aid office, distributed developers (if any)
- Infrastructure stewards - IT, facilities (building access)
- Users - faculty, students, staff, friends
At smaller schools, this planning step may be accomplished by one or two people who spend time talking to key stakeholders. For a case study of how a large institution addressed participation in a similar campus-wide project, refer to the Enterprise Directory Implementation Roadmap section on project structure.
The group assembled for this planning stage may also become the core group for the implementation stage. It all depends on the scope of your project and institutional environment.
Click [next] below for a some example guiding principles for Authentication.