Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Hey BlackDragon, not sure what type of Engineering you are in, but anyone in Software or alternatively anyone with an understanding of ERP Systems(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterpr...rce_p lanning) would be able to tell you that a complete grounds up renewal takes a long time and ridiculous amount of planning and change management. That task is long enough for fluid corporations but is intensely complex for a decentralized and complex decision making structure that exists at McMaster where we have multiple departments, faculties and stakeholders competing for various agendas all at the same time with no structured decision making process. I've been involved in this steering committee for the last 6-8 months and we are slowly creeping towards a point where we hire all the vendors, consultants and so on and those companies start working on the student information system(which is first in line) and people start seeing changes to MUGSI and SOLAR, The best case scenario would be Summer 2012 Registration Session but it could also be 2013 if things don't go well.

If McMaster was a top down corporation things would go much much faster, but it is a university and anyone in commerce here who has studied organizational behavior might attest to how incredibly difficult it is for people to organize and reach consensus. Because essentially they have a tripartite decision making structure(Board of Governors, Senate, Steering Committee, Advisory Committees and so on) where all departments want the best for their areas; including myself...when I'm representing students my bias is towards them and I have a difficult decision to make when a certain decision is best for the whole project but not the best for the student interests in opposition to an alternative that's best for students. I wish I could explain it better, but since this renewal will affect every single part of the university operations they are being very cautious and meticulous and that's going to take time. There is no easy sway of the wand that can fix MUGSI, and they can't tackle it directly as well because it's interconnected to other areas and they all need to comply and align.