MyEd and Notifications ready for the New Semester

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Essential upgrades are done to ensure that important services are up-to-date, fixing any bugs or issues found. Routine updates to MyEd are made each year, ensuring that it is kept up-to-date and running well. However, this has not been happening for the Notifications backbone service (the system managing the Notifications found on MyEd), with the technology previously used having reached its end-of-life stage.

Various teams across Information Services have not only been working therefore on just the annual essential upgrades to MyEd, but also rewriting the Notifications backbone service to replace the old technology. This ensures both services are secure, supported, and running smoothly as possible for end users.

Relevant teams also worked on continuous improvements of MyEd. Funding over several years has supported this, pooling resources together to make the Portal a more accessible service for all. One of these improvements was to make it easier for people to get to their ‘Favourites’ on MyEd, especially while on mobile view. Additionally, the ‘Notifications’ bell on MyEd is now more obvious and the way that users read and action Notifications is easier and more intuitive, enhancing user experience. While these may seem like small changes, they continue to build up the accessibility and improvements on MyEd, making a big impact for some people.

Using SCRUM

SCRUM is an agile project methodology that focuses on adding value. It applies constant feedback and collaboration to prioritise project delivery by working in a time-boxed period to continually focus on project delivery.

As this project combined three main objectives together, it was decided to use SCRUM to help prioritise project delivery. The project team worked in three-week sprints, at the end of each Sprint a retro and review was held in which the team discussed what value had been added alongside, reviewing what went well, what didn’t go well, and what to do better. This iterative approach allows the team to reflect and improve as the project progresses. The project delivered 25 Sprints in total.