Strategic opportunities

Technological innovation is a powerful and rapidly accelerating force. It has disrupted industry after industry and rewired global connections. The challenges outlined above demonstrate that UM feels the effects of that disruption deeply. The OneIT team believes that the IT community, regardless of how it is structured, must be a leader and trusted partner in addressing those disruptions to ultimately establish a creative, dynamic, and sound IT environment at UM.

Keeping in line with the goals of the UM Strategic Vision: Creating Change Together, and based on data collected throughout the engagement phase, we offer the following recommendations to address UM’s IT challenges and the President’s charge.

 

Recommendations

 

Shared vision, strategy, and accountability starting at the cabinet level

Recommendation addresses:

  • Leadership and governance
  • Strategic alignment
  • IT funding
  • Building partnerships
  • Valuing data

An ideal IT organization depends on partnerships, collaboration, and strategic alignment among the leaders of various sectors, including vice presidents, deans, and directors, to communicate a shared vision and accept accountability. The recommendations in this document are intended to move UM IT toward this goal. The success of these recommendations unequivocally depends on the cabinet working in unison on technology investment and organizational staffing decisions.

Provide feedback on recommendation 1

Disrupt silos to deliver integrated services efficiently

Recommendation addresses:

  • Quality of IT service
  • Efficiencies in personnel
  • IT organization flexibility
  • Building partnerships
  • Strategic vision alignment
  • Leadership and governance

Central and distributed IT units can and should operate as one integrated organization even without formal restructuring. Silos create barriers, but those barriers can be removed to reduce duplication of efforts, to increase knowledge sharing, and to deliver services that move the institution forward. It requires a culture focused on collaboration and partnership, not radical structural or organizational change.

Through shared vision, relationship-building, and cooperative agreements, we can integrate and improve services, reduce wasted efforts, improve user experiences, and provide meaningful opportunities for IT professionals.

IT is deeply embedded in everything the University does. IT professionals need to be attuned to the goals and needs of diverse sets of users. Leaders across campus told us they want and expect IT professionals to be agile and responsive to their operational needs and new initiatives; that is the reason distributed IT units exist. They emerged in response to historic challenges central IT faced in meeting rapidly increasing demands for technology services and solutions. The OneIT initiative was never intended to consolidate all IT employees in a single sector. Its goal is simply to maximize productivity, responsiveness, cross-training, and efficiency.

Good things are already happening in this direction. Six units are collaborating to implement a new IT service management system (ITMS) tool that will streamline services and support requests by users (see Heading in the right direction). An IT professional in Student Affairs IT will co-lead a central IT project to move employee email to the cloud.

Through shared vision, relationship-building, and cooperative agreements, we can integrate and improve services, reduce wasted efforts, improve user experiences, and provide meaningful opportunities for IT professionals.

Provide feedback on recommendation 2

Seek funding for physical space to bring IT professionals together

Recommendation addresses:

  • Quality of IT service
  • Training and development
  • IT organization flexibility
  • Building partnerships

IT professionals at UM are scattered and often housed in some of the least desirable locations on campus. Many spend their workday in basements with little natural light. Others share converted dorm rooms or cubicles. Separated by walls and distance, chance encounters with IT colleagues in other units happen rarely, inhibiting collaboration.

Silicon Valley tech companies are at the forefront of designing work spaces that foster cross pollination, collaboration, and productivity. The big idea championed by the industry is the concept of working in various spaces rather than at a fixed workstation. There might be "libraries" where employees can go to work quietly, and open space for collaborative activities. This concept, if applied at UM, would allow distributed IT professionals to spend time with their constituents as described above, yet still have an inviting space to go to connect and collaborate with IT colleagues from across campus. Project teams could push and support each other. Incident response teams could be pulled together rapidly to address urgent problems.

A partnership between UM IT and the Mansfield Library could benefit both entities. As the library adapts to a world dominated by digital content, it would benefit from housing the core of UM's IT talent. Large areas of contiguous space lined with bookshelves could be redesigned to maximize IT staff collaboration and efficiency. The space could include a center of innovation for faculty and researchers to work, learn, and develop solutions in partnership with IT professionals and librarians.

We recognize that this opportunity requires investment beyond current budget capacity. We encourage the University Foundation to consider the benefits of seeking private funding for an IT innovation center.

Provide feedback on recommendation 3

Transform UM's IT workforce to design solutions, not just deliver services

Recommendation addresses:

  • Quality of IT service
  • Efficiencies in personnel
  • Training and development
  • IT organization flexibility
  • Strategic alignment

An adequately staffed and supported
project management office (PMO) is a top priority

Transforming the IT workforce requires rethinking how IT services are provided and organized, as well as investing in the professional development of the people who provide those services. Successful transformation depends on fostering a culture that values continuous learning, sharing, and adaptation.

Both academic and administrative leaders of campus called for an IT organization that can proactively anticipate and creatively solve problems. This requires investment in new skill sets organized and empowered to deliver high value. Such skills include project management, data analysis, systems analysis, talent management, process, and interface design, to name a few.

In an effort to develop these skills and refine existing ones, IT professionals with whom we engaged throughout the OneIT process identified the following as recommendations for achieving a dynamic and growth-minded IT workforce:

  • Create an onboarding orientation program for new IT employees that introduces them to knowledge required of IT professionals at UM both online before their start date, as well as in-person upon starting their position.
  • Create a framework for individual career development plans to ensure IT professionals at UM build relevant skills and stay competitive for future career goals.
  • Create an IT-specific performance evaluation tool that measures performance against general standards of practice for IT professionals at UM, as well as position-specific standards.
  • Foster a knowledge-sharing network to facilitate collaborative learning. This would include building on existing offerings like IT short courses and leveraging existing networks like Tech Partners.
  • Create an IT Talent Development Officer role to design and facilitate training and professional development opportunities.

An adequately staffed and supported project management office (PMO) is a top priority. Building one will allow for appropriate technology consultation, needs analysis, and the management of collaborative projects that span silos. A PMO will provide a single point-of-entry for large-scale IT projects, ensure that projects support IT and campus strategic priorities, and aid in the alignment of talent to tasks and projects.

Provide feedback on recommendation 4

Rethink IT governance

Recommendation addresses:

  • Leadership and governance
  • Strategic alignment
  • IT funding
  • Valuing data
  • Building partnerships
  • Efficiencies in software, hardware
  • IT organization flexibility

The OneIT engagement process revealed that IT governance fails to meet needs and expectations of many stakeholders. IT Senate, as the formal representative IT governing body, should re-evaluate its charge and consider membership and leadership structures that would allow it to effectively influence IT strategic priorities and organizational behaviors.

We also recommend alternative approaches to "governance" to support a more agile IT organization. The OneIT initiative could provide a template. We proactively sought a diversity of voices and perspectives from various levels and sectors of campus as the foundation for making strategic recommendations, activities typically associated with effective governance. We engaged stakeholders individually, in groups, and through a transparent online community ideation tool. This approach, applied as an organizational habit, would ensure a continual flow of data about user needs and
stakeholder interests.

Provide feedback on recommendation 5

Design and execute effective hardware and software procurement policies and processes

Recommendation addresses:

  • Efficiencies in software, hardware
  • IT organization flexibility
  • Focusing on users
  • Keeping IT simple
  • Valuing data
  • IT funding

Hardware and software purchasing represents a significant opportunity for cost savings. There are several specific changes that can be made to save money.

Software

  • Develop and maintain a comprehensive inventory of software and applications licensed on campus, and build that data into software evaluation processes to reduce duplication.

  • Build on the Software Asset Management model administered by central IT which build partnerships across campus to consolidate software purchasing. In addition to saving money through volume purchasing, there are benefits such moving to different licensing models.

Hardware

  • Continue pushing for virtualization of servers and consolidation of data centers and server rooms into the Modular Data Center. This consolidation would save money not just on hardware, but on management, support, and energy costs.
  • Standardize computer lab hardware and place it on a set replacement cycle. We also recommend exploring the cost savings possible by moving to a thin client/virtual desktop model as currently in use by several areas across campus.
  • Create a standard faculty computer roll-out model. The current faculty roll-out model of disbursing funds to departments causes a wide diversity in machines that need to be supported as well as the amount of funds expended per unit. Creating a process with a set catalog of a limited number of faculty machines available would allow for a more sustainable support model as well as reduce the per-unit cost by pooling purchases into a greater number of units.

 Provide feedback on recommendatio 6

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