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"We were, before Copado, really walking on eggshells when it came to assigning out development stories. I, as the scrum master, had to be very careful to make sure that I wasn't assigning anything that one developer would work on that would overwrite another developer's work."
Scrum Master, GMU
Explore how George Mason University overcame legacy deployment bottlenecks and severe merge conflicts during their Salesforce Education Cloud rollout. With Copado, they automated their DevOps pipeline, achieved a reliable two-week sprint cadence, and empowered teams to deliver Patriot Connect, a unified “student 360” CRM experience for the entire university.
George Mason University (GMU) is Virginia's largest public research university, enrolling over 40,000 students from all 50 states and 130 countries. Committed to accessibility and innovation, its mission is to build an inclusive academic community that creates a more just, free, and prosperous world.
Issue Technical Releases
Days Saved per Major Deployment
User stories bundled
Developer Sprint Cadences
George Mason University (GMU) partnered with Accenture to launch Patriot Connect, a transformative Salesforce Education Cloud platform that replaces siloed legacy systems with a unified, easily managed environment. By centralizing everything from prospective applications and orientation events to thousands of academic coaching appointments, the platform seamlessly manages the entire student lifecycle. However, the joint development team faced immense technical friction during the initial rollout. Relying on fragmented tools like change sets and Workbench made deploying over 2,000 complex components, such as OmniScript, nearly impossible. These manual processes caused merge conflicts, requiring 10 to 15 days to map out dependencies and resolve code overwrites, which heavily impacted developers and delayed the critical enhancements students relied on.
"We were, before Copado, really walking on eggshells when it came to assigning out development stories. I, as the scrum master, had to be very careful to make sure that I wasn't assigning anything that one developer would work on that would overwrite another developer's work."
Scrum Master
Realizing that manual troubleshooting was draining the team's bandwidth, Accenture’s technology architects recommended Copado based on prior successful partnerships. A one-week delay entering UAT acted as the primary catalyst, prompting GMU to shift to Copado's automated DevOps platform. To mitigate transition risks, the Accenture technology team led internal hands-on training sessions to get GMU developers up to speed quickly. Together, they utilized Copado's user story bundling and source format pipelines to effortlessly manage over 550 user stories and 3,000 components. Furthermore, automated static code analysis immediately caught Apex class violations, ensuring code quality directly at the source rather than in higher environments.
"With Copado you can deploy the profile and you can deploy incrementally if you don't want to fully deploy. These are the features that definitely help our team and we love Copado right now."
Salesforce Support Manager
Copado’s modern DevOps capabilities empowered GMU's team to operate on a consistent two-week sprint cadence, confidently deploying up to 30 to 40 impactful items per cycle. This operational consistency paved the way for Patriot Connect, a transformative Education Cloud platform that replaced GMU’s siloed legacy systems. Patriot Connect provides a unified 360-degree view, managing the entire lifecycle from prospect to admitted student. This new platform allows GMU applicants and students to easily schedule appointments, connect with advisors and coaches, and streamline their applications for a frictionless educational journey.
By removing the friction of manual deployments, Copado and Accenture successfully delivered a stable, high-performing system that operates seamlessly in the background for the entire university community.
"Ultimately, a smooth release builds trust. It means the technology is working quietly in the background and enabling the university community to do their jobs and succeed without unnecessary friction."
Scrum Master
The success of Patriot Connect has solidified Copado as the foundational DevOps standard for GMU's ongoing Salesforce journey. Moving forward, the university plans to consolidate three separate Salesforce systems into the unified Patriot Connect platform, with Copado acting as the primary deployment engine. GMU’s leadership envisions demonstrating these robust capabilities to other application teams, advocating for broader DevOps modernization across the university. By providing reliable, high-quality releases, Copado enables GMU to continuously refine student portals, coaching features, and application lifecycles, proving that a strong technological foundation directly elevates the educational experience.
"Anything that happens within the Salesforce platform and the portals that are student- and applicant-facing will all be benefiting from Copado as the DevOps tool."
CRM Director
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