Expansion and aggregation of long-range planning

To support ITS in providing better insight into technology initiatives planned in the next five years, Long Range Planning began in early 2020. Following the creation of the Technology Roadmaps and service plans, teams were better positioned to evaluate technology needs and prioritize projects. These activities gave more visibility to ITS Finance about funding needs to support Yale’s technology requirements across all services.

Traditionally teams contemplated portfolio project ideas in early fall and drafted Business Cases at that point to request funding for the coming fiscal year. Now, with long-range planning happening first, project teams can plan earlier and take time to coordinate resources, get input from vendors, assess the best approach, and include more accurate cost estimates.

Beyond portfolio budgeting, driving effective and comprehensive planning requires many processes and requires input from many teams to be realistic and accurate. First, Service Owners, Service Offering Managers, and Application Owners need to assess their toolset and applications to determine where to invest versus tolerate, migrate, or eliminate. Next, operating budgets need to support timelines for investment, or there will be a need to leverage portfolio budgets for additional funds. The team engages departments and leadership to proactively guide strategic conversations to support establishing priorities, time horizons, and sponsorship. By giving university partners insight sooner, the objective is to promote more predictability, drive better decision-making, and best use Yale funds.

Our stakeholders include service owners, application owners, service offering managers, department finance leads, pillar points of contact, etc. These stakeholders give insight into all the pieces that work together. The Portfolio Management Office (PMO) has also collaborated with Domain Partners from the Service Management Office (SMO), Architecture, and ITS Finance to create an IT Governance Roadmap. The Roadmap outlines activities for stakeholders to perform throughout the year to support the planning exercises, financial reviews, refining service level agreements (SLAs), and service activities necessary to inform our long-range vision of technology solutions for the university.

The team recently added the IT Governance Roadmap to the PMO Sharepoint site. There we explain the mission, vision, roles, and responsibilities and make the Roadmap Dashboard available for use. Please visit the Governance-Roadmap page.

Although ITS resources perform many of the steps, input and guidance from our university partners are critical. Engaging our pillar chairs to ensure focus is driven by the university and not by IT or technology makes sure we are delivering where there is the greatest need. Pillar Chair meetings happen five to six times a year to reflect on progress, establish priorities and plan for investment.

We invite teams to engage in their related processes and to ask questions where they need help understanding how everything fits together. The IT Governance Map should be a resource to enable better outcomes, and as the tool is more broadly shared, we welcome your input and engagement.