Facilitating Complex Institution-wide Projects

Where: College of the Holy Cross
Hogan Campus Center Third Floor
College Street Gate 7
Worcester, Massachusetts

When:9:00 am - 3:15 pm

Note: Registration begins at 8:00am

Workshop Organizer: Gina Siesing of Tufts University

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In this one-day session, colleagues from multiple institutions will present on success factors for complex projects they've facilitated, or are in the process of facilitating. We'll identify and discuss effective practices for engaging stakeholders from across the institution, for sharing timely information among project participants and with those who might have interest at varying levels, and for bringing the full community along in support of a complex project's success.

We'll distill the elements of large-scale higher-ed project leadership that transcend specific project topics or types, and we'll focus on ways of working effectively within the culture and context of the institution.

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their own upcoming or current projects and to reflect on how they might enact key strategies within their local institutions. Developing a network of colleagues facilitating projects of similar scope and complexity is a key goal of the day.

Event Schedule:
8:00am – 9:00am Registration and Coffee

9:00am – 9:30am Welcome and Introductions

9:30am – 10:00am Tufts LMS Strategy & Implementation
Speaker: Gina Siesing, Director of Educational & Scholarly Technology Services, Tufts University

For the first time, stakeholders across Tufts Schools and Central Administration have charted a strategic course that involves implementing a common platform for learning, teaching, and collaboration, based on the Sakai open-source platform, as well as a coordinated service and support model to enable effective use of that new university platform. This presentation will describe highlights, challenges, and strategies of the Tufts process, from the 18-month planning project to three-phase implementation plans, to the initial year of service, to engagements with the open source community and professional services partners. In tandem with colleagues who lead the "New SIS" project at Tufts, I'll present on the important threads of connection between these two large-scale university projects, describing how we've communicated between the LMS and SIS projects over the years; how we have worked with our shared stakeholders across the university community; and how we've thought and planned together around strategies for project success, about areas of interoperability and overlapping functionality, and about future roadmaps beyond the initial scope of these allied projects.

10:00am - 10:30am Tufts New SIS Project Strategy & Implementation
Speakers:
Mark Damian, Tufts University, Director of Enterprise Applications
Linda Snell, Associate Director Of Student and Alumni Services and New SIS Project Integration Manager, Tufts University

Stakeholders across all schools within Tufts University have charted a strategic course to implement Oracle’s Campus Solutions from PeopleSoft to replace its existing mainframe-based student application. When completed, the university will have a common platform for its largest ERP applications – Finance, HR, and Student. Parallel to this large-scale implementation project, the university is also implementing a university-wide LMS application based on the Sakai open-source platform as well as Oracle’s Identity Management suite of tools. This presentation will describe highlights, challenges, and strategies of the Tufts process, from the 28-month Discovery project to the three year implementation model. In tandem with colleagues who lead the "LMS" project at Tufts, we will present on the important threads of connection between these two large-scale university projects, describing how we've communicated between the LMS and SIS projects over the years; how we have worked with our shared stakeholders across the university community; and how we've thought and planned together around strategies for project success, about areas of interoperability and overlapping functionality, and about future roadmaps beyond the initial scope of these allied projects.

10:30am – 10:45am Break

10:45am – 11:00am Q & A for Tufts Presenters

11:00am – 11:45am Harvard University IT Redesign
Speaker: Anne Margulies, Vice President and CIO, Harvard University


11:45am – 12:45pm Lunch

12:45pm – 1:30pm Going Google - Knowing Your Method (in the Madness)
Speaker: James Fadden, Director of User Services, Learning, Information, and Technology Services (LITS), Allegheny College

Allegheny College selected Google Apps for Education to replace its POP and Webmail service, provide a unified web calendar and online collaboration tools in the December of 2008. It was assumed that success of the project was directly related to the community believing that the change was worth the disruption it caused not simply having a current working set of tools. The project was characterized by clear milestones and responsibilities with lots of room to maneuver for decision making, implementing the system, and transitioning the user community. The project was complete in roughly a calendar year with few problems and a fair amount of good will towards computing services that was not there prior.

1:30pm – 2:15pm Change Fatigue: The Art of Timing Projects, or Just Knowing When Enough is Enough!
Speaker: Mark Berman, Chief Information Officer, Siena College

Many projects undertaken by IT involve changing the way people do their jobs. Change is something that is difficult enough at the best of times but when change is piled on change, users will eventually revolt. It would be nice to just deploy a system that works and then not mess with it, but upgrades need to be applied, technology becomes obsolete, and sometimes there are domino relationships where, in order to make one change others need to happen in close proximity. It is part of our job in delivering technology to our campuses to manage change in a way that people can absorb. This presentation will explore ways to look at how projects inter-relate, how they affect different groups on campus, and how to approach the timing, combination, and advertising of projects to minimize change fatigue.

2:15pm – 3:00pm Synthesis: Top 5 Most Effective Practices (or similar activity) in Small Groups

3:00pm – 3:15pm Wrap-up and End