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Old 04-17-2015 at 10:48 AM   #31
mattinui
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It sounds to me like the school government knew that with the two existing companies, we would be getting a extremely sub-par product but didn't have the insight to ask if it could be done better, and without spending $45 million. McMaster has a software engineering department with professors and students that know how to code and have an actual eye for design. Plenty of students looking for co-op experience and experienced profs that could lead the project could possibly have done a much better job.

I understand why in theory the school would want to go with an experienced company, but from what I can tell the only thing they are experienced at is making bloated, ugly software made with extremely outdated methodologies.

If conflict of interest was concern, then I agree smaller companies should have been consulted. Now we are stuck with a bad system for the foreseeable future because people with likely no software experience gave the green light to spend millions on something they understand nothing about.
Old 04-17-2015 at 10:57 AM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ownaginatios View Post
Were no smaller companies consulted? I don't see the point of exclusively trying to find an "off the shelf solution" if it takes half a decade to deliver it. Integrating all that isn't terribly difficult and scaling up isn't too much of an issue these days when you have things like AWS you can host on.
Big companies usually run the show here for a lot of reasons.

1) Support (specifically with older hardware or software aka browsers)
2) Security. This system would have all the employee files including sin numbers etc. Most small companies do not have the resources, experience, test teams or insurance to guarantee their product will not be hacked (and pay for damages if it does)
3) Scale. This is a massive software solution for not just students but also all the HR systems. ERP solutions are designed to bring together several formally isolated systems into a single system with top notch data migration techniques.

Could a medium sized company do it? Yup and it would be a huge risk financially. Annd they would be acquired by a big company very quickly if their product got traction (like PeopleSoft got acquired by Oracle)

That said if SAP or IBM (the other two big players in this general space but dont have products directly related to this i think) were to create a cloud-first modern solution then it would probably be better.



Quote:
Originally Posted by mattinui View Post
It sounds to me like the school government knew that with the two existing companies, we would be getting a extremely sub-par product but didn't have the insight to ask if it could be done better, and without spending $45 million. McMaster has a software engineering department with professors and students that know how to code and have an actual eye for design. Plenty of students looking for co-op experience and experienced profs that could lead the project could possibly have done a much better job.

I understand why in theory the school would want to go with an experienced company, but from what I can tell the only thing they are experienced at is making bloated, ugly software made with extremely outdated methodologies.

If conflict of interest was concern, then I agree smaller companies should have been consulted. Now we are stuck with a bad system for the foreseeable future because people with likely no software experience gave the green light to spend millions on something they understand nothing about.

If it were say the general mcmaster.ca website ... then absolutely yes. But no-one (or extremely few) at Mac (including professors) has the technical knowledge and experience to build such a complex integrated system. Remember SE profs at mac tend to be very math and theory driven or specialize in low level (hardware level programming, not application level). Beside a lot of them never had a software job outside of Academia besides a coop. And students are ... students. They suck at code and architecture right now compared to people who have been in the field for even a year.
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Last edited by qwerty91 : 04-17-2015 at 11:05 AM.

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Old 04-18-2015 at 02:25 PM   #33
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Quote:
Originally Posted by qwerty91 View Post
Big companies usually run the show here for a lot of reasons.

1) Support (specifically with older hardware or software aka browsers)
2) Security. This system would have all the employee files including sin numbers etc. Most small companies do not have the resources, experience, test teams or insurance to guarantee their product will not be hacked (and pay for damages if it does)
3) Scale. This is a massive software solution for not just students but also all the HR systems. ERP solutions are designed to bring together several formally isolated systems into a single system with top notch data migration techniques.
Hmm yeah, I figured the appeal was more that Oracle is willing to take the hit in the event something goes wrong than the quality of what they deliver. I'm not sure I agree with the security thing, seeing as MOSAIC from a technology standpoint looks like something that would have been delivered nearly a decade ago.

Quote:
If it were say the general mcmaster.ca website ... then absolutely yes. But no-one (or extremely few) at Mac (including professors) has the technical knowledge and experience to build such a complex integrated system. Remember SE profs at mac tend to be very math and theory driven or specialize in low level (hardware level programming, not application level). Beside a lot of them never had a software job outside of Academia besides a coop. And students are ... students. They suck at code and architecture right now compared to people who have been in the field for even a year.
Well said. None of the professors are engineers (for the most part) or have been out of industry for so long that their knowledge aside from theory is no longer relevant.

I sure as hell wouldn't trust undergraduate students working with sensitive material on a project like this. My undergraduate self included, lol.
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Old 04-21-2015 at 01:09 PM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ownaginatios View Post
Were no smaller companies consulted? I don't see the point of exclusively trying to find an "off the shelf solution" if it takes half a decade to deliver it. Integrating all that isn't terribly difficult and scaling up isn't too much of an issue these days when you have things like AWS you can host on.
While most students are interacting with the student registration side, that's just a portion of the overall ERP offering. I don't believe any of the other shortlisted companies had the scale to have a comprehensive solution that made each silo/department at McMaster happy, when push came to shove considering the huge investment that is going to last at least a decade none of the departments were going to accept a solution that was lacking in their department but acceptable in others.

So those two were the last ones standing for that reason. And since they have a virtual monopoly and software offered at thousands of institutions worldwide, I'm sure you can imagine how pushing out periodic updates might not be strategic considering each institution does numerous modifications to the system and compatibility over updates becomes a challenge. An analogy for that is how Google Nexus devices get upgrades before aftermarket modified systems like Samsung/OnePlusOne, except for ERP you are dealing with complex and sensitive data so the threshold for error is very low.
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Old 04-22-2015 at 11:40 AM   #35
mattinui
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One of the things that bothers me too is just how bad it looks. I'm not sure how much control is given to the school over interface design, but the whole thing has about ten different visual designs and is extremely cluttered. I'm sure there are students out there who could atleast work on more modern design elements, so we can ditch the clip art look from 2001 (which is also present all over the Mac Website). Why does seemingly every little feature need its own box or whatever on the page? Makes it extremely cluttered and difficult to navigate.

Also, if I do something like look at my timetable, why do I have to relog in? Am I not in the same system (which was the whole point).
Old 04-22-2015 at 11:49 AM   #36
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Each "box" is a module. It's a functional requirement --- building individual modules and having significant customization from different stakeholders/users.

The suggestions that undergrad engineering students could do better than this, even for any individual component of this system, are getting annoying. As Huzaifa pointed out already --- everyone claims undergrads can do it, but very few understand what's actually behind it. Hopefully just pointing out why those "boxes" are actually critical, will help some people realize that there's USUALLY some reason behind a lot of the seemingly simplistic design features.
Old 04-22-2015 at 11:46 PM  
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Old 04-24-2015 at 11:16 AM   #37
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mike_302 View Post
Each "box" is a module. It's a functional requirement --- building individual modules and having significant customization from different stakeholders/users.

The suggestions that undergrad engineering students could do better than this, even for any individual component of this system, are getting annoying. As Huzaifa pointed out already --- everyone claims undergrads can do it, but very few understand what's actually behind it. Hopefully just pointing out why those "boxes" are actually critical, will help some people realize that there's USUALLY some reason behind a lot of the seemingly simplistic design features.
Im not saying boxes are necessarily a bad design choice, my problem is that theres so many, and they all have different styles it just makes an extremely cluttered mess of a system. I agree that undergrads shouldnt be working on the coding and actual implementation of such a large system, but there is definite room for improvement in the layout and graphic design. Is it absolutely required? No, the system works (although by that same logic so did MUGSI and SOLAR - both worked but both work poorly).

Theres a lot of talent at Mac and even just replacing the graphics and images with a cohesive look would make it much easier for students to navigate.
Old 04-24-2015 at 05:12 PM   #38
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GUI aside, it's extremely slow and sometimes it doesn't even respond when I click things... I hope this is all resolved before fall course selection, otherwise I feel like we're all going to miss SOLAR.
Old 05-14-2015 at 10:20 PM   #39
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Applying for upper year program
I missed the deadline for the upper year program application. Is there anyway that I can get help with this?
Old 05-14-2015 at 11:38 PM   #40
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Quote:
I missed the deadline for the upper year program application. Is there anyway that I can get help with this?
As the original post of this thread I will say... how the hell should I know? Do you even know what this thread is all about? This thread is students ranting on MOSAIC, not academic adviser help desk.

You know, it's 2015, so everyone should know how forums work, and you are applying for grad school so you should know that if you have questions about your ... academics, you need to contact your ... academic adviser.
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