Since the Fall of 2022, a project team from WashU IT Enterprise Applications has been working on RADAR, a new custom application that will be used by Departmental Research Administrators throughout the University. The core project team members include: Jimmy Dorman – Project Manager, Scott Hughes – Technical Lead, Nick Kondis, Collin Holthaus, Mark Siffer, and Jeremy Dodt – Developers, Kelly Lavick and Adrian Goh – Business Analyst, Matt House – Solution Architect, Jean Shuler – Business Alignment Lead, Travis Mossotti – Product Owner, Sarah Everett – Management.
What is RADAR? This new custom-built application with an Angular front end and .NET back end is targeted for departmental administrators to create the Other Support Report, pulling data from RMS and Workday; it will reduce departmental dependence on shadow systems and the use of Word to develop the report. The WashU IT Enterprise Applications project team initially partnered with ArchitectNow to build the foundational application. Once the Foundation Build of the application was available, the WUIT Enterprise Applications project team developed the features and functionality for the application. The project was managed with a hybrid project management style starting with Waterfall and transitioning to Agile. The project team created a Project Charter and Business Requirements Document, using a hybrid of waterfall and agile for the development and testing in 2-week sprints. The project team partnered with key business partners Iris Dickhoff-Pepper, Beth McClendon, Emily Shepherd, and Sonia Moore and met on a recurring basis (typically every other week) to clarify requirements, demo development work, and testing.
Specific Key Features and Benefits of RADAR include:
· Data integration from RMS and Workday alleviating the need to look up or rekey data
· Ability to edit imported information and save those changes for future Other Support reports
· Area within the application to enter and store In-Kind Support for key personnel and the ability to add projects that don’t exist in RMS (“Project Master” records) as well as Subproject records.
· Security aligned to view and update report details, listing all proposals and awards, regardless of proposal’s primary department
· Generation of MS Word and PDF reports formatted currently as the NIH Other Support
· Ability to track the workflow status when coordinating review and approvals from Principal Investigators
The RADAR system went live on April 3rd. During the summer months, the project team held working sessions and completed Phase 2 tasks, which included adding the Common Form and completing items from the Phase 1 backlog. Future enhancements will include integration with SciENcv. Training sessions will be provided throughout the Fall to onboards to this new application additional user.