Alpha Financials is using a Hybrid Agile delivery approach for requirements, design, development, and testing. In October 2019, the team completed multiple functional and technical development cycles (sprints), during which functionality was built for UC Merced’s system. Each sprint began with detailed requirements gathering and ended in a demonstration of a completed object or feature during the sprint review. Alpha Financials configured the following Cloud Financial modules for UC Merced: General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, Grants Management, Contracts, Project Portfolio Management, Collections, Purchasing, Fixed Assets, and Planning and Budgeting.
The project is performing detailed process design on all modules ahead of sprint cycles. Our approach to detailed process design heavily depends on our Finance team and their deep understanding of UC Merced’s mission and unique campus considerations. The team is also working with subject matter experts from across campus to inform the Oracle modules’ functionality and to ensure campus reporting needs are integrated in the design. Within each sprint, the team will validate requirements elicited, complete design, build, and test specific elements of functionality.
The project team completed the first round of Systems Integration Testing (SIT1) in June and is currently underway with the second round of testing (SIT2). SIT2 allows the UC Merced implementation team and Subject Matter Experts to be hands-on in the system to validate the design and integrations with UC Merced systems. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is scheduled for Fall 2020.
