Customer/User Job-to-be-Done or Problem

As a product manager responsible for Alumni Pathways, I want to provide the outcome of recent graduates (1yr after graduation) showing jobs, skills, in field vs out of the field employment within the period, so institutions can use the data to make critical path decisions for their programs.

As an institution user (IR, academics, advancement), I want to look at recent graduates' employment outcomes to measure the success of student, program, and career outcomes.

I want to see data and visualization on where my recent graduates' alumni are:

• Getting employed within one year of graduation

• Employment details SOC code and (Job titles)

• Whether their employment is in their program of study

• What skills do they have

• Filtered by program

• Filtered by graduation year

• Transfer details (institution name) if they transferred to diff institution within the year of graduation.

• Employer information

• Location information of their employment

Value to Customers & Users

Alumni outcomes in institutions start with whether their recent graduates are getting jobs in their field of study.

Institution Research and Academics:

• Alumni outcomes within 1 year of graduation are used to review their programs and curriculum to prepare their students for job markets.

• Assess whether Alumni have the necessary skills or are getting their skills outside of their institutions.

Advancement:

• With a successful outcome data drive fundraising.

Value to Lightcast

AP #1 goal for 2023 is retention. Having outcome-based data (as defined by institutions) and visualization will instantly provide value to the institutions.

Some customers that have put high emphasis on a student's first job or job within one year of graduation outcome configurable visualization:

Vinh Nguyen, Irvine Valley College Note: As per Vinh, this is critical for community colleges, as they offer more certifications and other non-degree credentials.

Anne Deeter, Dominican University

Andrew Scearce, Southern New Hampshire University

Target User Role/Client/Client Category

Institutional Researchers and Advancement.

Delivery Mechanism

It will be on the Alumni Pathways vertical under Analyst. A separate tile or left-hand navigation (could be under School Summary) called "Alumni Career Outcomes" with visualization with left-hand navigation to filter by years, programs, degree levels, academic units, academic sub-units, locations, and skills.

Success Criteria & Metrics

Every AP ARR institution with Institutional research, academics, and advancement personas uses the new "Alumni Career Outcomes" report at least once within a month of getting access to the feature.

We will add tracking in pendo to capture the metrics to measure this.

Aspects that are out of scope (of this phase)

We will not be getting additional data that currently doesn't exist.

We will not be generating any Tableau deliverables files for this. 

Solution Description

• We will call this "Alumni Career Outcomes" (Placeholder name)

• The UI will have a side filter for program names, degree levels, graduation status, graduation cohort year, job titles, SOC, companies, and skills filter.

• The standard visualization (type of visualization will be brainstormed and mocked up with Issac) will have one-year outcome highlighting jobs, skills gained, and transfer details. Users can filter further based on their needs.

• End users will be able to download the image.

• Add pendo tracking to capture metrics.

Early UX (wireframes or mockups)

Questions for design:

• Is there a better way to create a visualization other than with the Sankey chart for the above solution description? Sankey charts with too many categories, as will be the case for AP, with this feature may make it difficult to read for the end users. 

Non-Functional Attributes & Usage Projections

Consider performance characteristics, privacy/security implications, localization requirements, mobile requirements, accessibility requirements

Dependencies

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Just answer yes or no.

High-Level Rollout Strategies

• We will roll out to all AP customers with first launch.

• If we decide to go with a different chart view (other than Sankey), then we will have have in -prodcut Pendo Guide to guide users with the new workflow and loom and feel.

• Since this will be a new section (tile view or other views) in Alumni Pathways vertical under Analyst, we will create collaterals (demo/product release notes update/other as-needed documentation) for Sales, Marketing, and Success to promote the new feature.

• Measure usage metrics in pendo to measure success.

Risks

Focus on risks unique to this feature, not overall delivery/execution risks. 

Open Questions

1. How is this different from AP Consulting Tableau deliverable “Career Pathways Analytics”?

   1. “Alumni Career Outcomes” will be its own tile in AP (or a side bar navigation) and will have skills data added. Also, the filter available for this will be more, so institutions can view visualizations based on their individual needs.

2. Doesn’t this mean we will be cannibalizing AP Consulting Tableau deliverable “Career Pathways Analytics”?

   1. We don’t have a big pipeline for AP Consulting Tableau deliverables $21k as compare to $1.8 Millions for AP. We did $15.5k sales for AP Consulting Tableau deliverables as compare to $2.5 Millions for AP.

   2. If institutions prefer to get Tableau files, they will continue to use this.

Complete with Engineering Teams

Estimated Costs

Direct Financial Costs

Are there direct costs that this feature entails? Dataset acquisition, server purchasing, software licenses, etc.?

Team Effort

Each team involved should give a general t-shirt size estimate of their work involved. As the epic proceeds, they can add a link to the Jira epic/issue associated with their portion of this work.

Back-End

Front-End