PART 1

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

Because of the dominant role the data pipeline plays in delivering Alumni Pathways features, even some small software improvements require multiple engineering teams across the pipeline to collaborate and coordinate on the optimal approach for delivery.

This epic specifically captures cross-team work on scoping (e.g. 3-in-a-box) and then collaboratively building and releasing smaller or one-off software improvements (typically “small” or “medium” T-shirt sizes). Larger software improvements are written up as their own epics. Software improvements that only require the Analyst Red team’s contributions are treated separately as “product upkeep.”

For more information on the data pipeline and supporting engineering teams, see this presentation for a visual summary.

Value to Customers & Users

The cross-team improvements covered by this epic are typically either requested by customers and/or surfaced through product research with customers. Specific benefits to customers and users are included on each issue.

Value to Lightcast

The value added to customers (and buyers) of these features will increase retention (e.g. by removing friction or adding value in the software), support new sales (e.g. through improving demos of the software), and/or reduce costs (e.g. by reducing the burden on data delivery and/or success teams). Specific benefits to Lightcast are included on each issue.

Target User Role/Client/Client Category

Target external users: Institutional Research, Academic Leadership / President’s Office, Enrollment Marketing, and Advancement/Alumni Relations/Foundations teams across all current Edu segments.

Target internal users: Lightcast Sales, Marketing, Success, and Engineering teams

Delivery Mechanism

Customers will ultimately experience these improvements through either the Alumni Pathways software on the Analyst Software Platform and/or via files (Excel / Tableau) produced by the Customer Delivery Operations Team (CDOT) led by David Wallace.

• Note that we are intentionally moving away from delivering data pipeline outputs in static files (Excel/CSV) as part of our strategy to pull users towards using the dynamic software platforms, APIs, and potentially Snowflake instead.

Lightcast engineering and delivery teams will experience these improvements at their various points in the data pipeline.

Success Criteria & Metrics

Definition of Done: Jira issues completed.

Success Criteria: Are noted on each issue.

North Star Metric

Alumni Pathway’s current North Star Metric is Filtered Reports per Month by Account (as a proxy for answering institutional users' questions and supporting their work). We believe that each feature we complete will improve this metric, and will be monitoring progress over time.

Aspects that are out of scope (of this phase)

Anything that isn’t an issue on one of the epics linked by engineering teams.

PART 2

Solution Description

Early UX (wireframes or mockups)

Designs are attached to each issue as relevant.

Non-Functional Attributes & Usage Projections

Privacy / Security Implications

Any use of National Student Clearinghouse data as part of this epic and/or the ultimate solution will need to comply with our contractual requirements described in a previous epic (https://economicmodeling.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DPM/pages/2488172582).

Localization Requirements

Alumni Pathways is USA-only. Wherever National Student Clearinghouse data is used, development must be restricted to the USA only (due to security requirements in our partnership agreement with the Clearinghouse). Special background checks will be required for development and support teams accessing Clearinghouse data as part of this work.

Other Requirements

We will need to achieve at least the standard/typical performance and privacy/security of all software across the Alumni Pathways product and data pipeline.

Any improvements to Alumni Pathways software specifically will need to meet the mobile and accessibility requirements of the Analyst Platform.

Dependencies

None.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Just answer yes or no.

High-Level Rollout Strategies

These improvements will be released via our standard agile engineering process and communicated to Sales / Marketing / Success as applicable by our standard education product process (monthly update + release notes by sprint).

Risks

Appropriate safeguards and correct handling of protected information (PII & National Student Clearinghouse)

Open Questions

N/A

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.