Supporting an ambitious Ellucian Banner transformation programme at a major UK university.
An ambitious modernisation programme
The university is transforming its student records environment, introducing Banner as a modern platform alongside streamlined student and staff experiences. The ambition is significant: modernise the estate while maintaining confidence in the services and journeys that students and staff depend on every day.
Transformation on this scale reaches across a broad, interconnected university ecosystem.
Running alongside the journey: curriculum management and partnerships.
Creating confidence as change progresses
As the programme gathered pace, the university recognised an opportunity to strengthen its approach to quality and assurance, and create a consistent framework that could evolve alongside the transformation. Working closely with university teams and programme partners, 2i helped establish that foundation.
Together, the teams introduced a programme-wide approach spanning strategy and planning, governance, quality gates, reporting, data migration assurance and business acceptance, bringing programme leadership, technical teams, architects, business specialists and delivery partners around a shared understanding of quality, risk and readiness.
Rather than assurance sitting at the end of delivery, it became part of how the programme moved forward.
Strong foundations, positive progress
Phase 1 was successfully completed on schedule and within budget, establishing a strong foundation for the phases ahead. Functional testing and data migration assurance produced meaningful evidence behind that progress, helping the programme identify and address important issues ahead of go-live.
Business acceptance
2i also established the framework and approach for UAT, helping business teams understand their role in acceptance and guiding them through the process. This created a more consistent approach to validating critical business journeys and building evidence of readiness ahead of go-live.
Building greater efficiency through automation
As the programme evolves, the university and 2i are continuing to identify opportunities to increase efficiency and strengthen assurance.
A recent automation Proof of Concept was successfully delivered to schedule and well received by the university. While UI automation was the initial focus, the team extended the scope to demonstrate API test automation, showing how automation could be applied more broadly across the technology environment.
This provides a foundation for a more efficient and repeatable approach to regression testing as the programme develops, helping specialist teams focus their effort where it can add the greatest value.
Banner experience and Higher Education knowledge
The team combines growing hands-on experience of Banner with established Higher Education domain knowledge, helping them understand not only the technology, but the student journeys, operational dependencies and assurance challenges around it.
That context helps the team engage effectively with university stakeholders and consider risk in the context of the wider transformation, rather than treating Banner as an isolated technology implementation.
Building capability for what comes next
With the initial phase successfully delivered, the programme continues to evolve as Banner connects more deeply with the university's wider technology environment.
The next stages bring greater integration, data and regression assurance requirements. The successful automation PoC provides another foundation for addressing that complexity more efficiently as the programme progresses. Accessibility assurance against WCAG 2.2 AA is also planned as part of the programme's continued development.
The aim is not simply to add more testing as complexity increases, but to keep evolving the assurance approach so the programme maintains momentum while retaining visibility and control.
What this demonstrates
- See risk more clearly. Greater visibility across interconnected systems, data and critical student journeys.
- Make confident decisions. Meaningful evidence around quality, risk and readiness.
- Create greater efficiency. Automation and repeatable approaches help specialist teams focus their expertise where it creates most value.
- Keep transformation moving. Scalable assurance and stronger governance support progress without unnecessarily slowing delivery.
Transformation should create value, not simply activity. Better evidence helps make sure it does.
Read the full case study
The complete case study covers the student lifecycle scope, the assurance framework, progress to date and the capability being built for the phases ahead.
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