Preparing for the Job Family Redesign, Improved Processes and Forms, and more at the May IT LT meeting

The IT Leadership Team met on May 25 to discuss the following topics:

Preparing for the Job Family Redesign

Blanche Temple shared recent updates on the Job Family Redesign pilot. In particular, she mentioned that a full timeline of upcoming activities is now available on a dedicated Job Family Redesign section of the IT at Yale’s Teams site.

Recently, job profiles/job templates for IT roles were sent to IT leaders. Ultimately, these will be available to everyone in ITS. It’s important to note the differences between a job profile and a job description:

• Job profiles (not editable): Summarize the responsibilities and functions associated with a given job. It includes the minimum qualifications that candidates need to possess for the role.
• Job description (editable): An overview of the specific duties and responsibilities of the job. It provides a high level of detail so that a misunderstanding with the employee about his or her job responsibilities is never in doubt. It’s one of the components that also serves to establish yearly goals and objectives. As part of this pilot, this position focus/job description will also be utilized to determine a staff member’s business title, as outlined by John Barden within this May 12 Leadership Team Meeting article.

To help manage the transition during the Job Family Redesign, job postings will not change through the month of June and July. In addition, no changes will be made in Workday through July. New resources will be added, as available, to the IT at Yale Team’s site including information, templates, job profiles, etc.

Improving the Yale College Early Registration Process

Deputy University Registrar Shonna Marshall shared the history of course registration at Yale, including the “shopping period” where students could try a course before registering. Despite the novelty, Yale wanted to provide a better enrollment experience for students and faculty. Therefore, in 2018, a decision was made to end the “shopping period.” With the help of their vendor, Leepfrog, and despite challenges (including the pandemic), Yale launched its prior term registration solution in 2021. Students, faculty/instructors, departments, and ITS all benefit from this enhancement, which utilizes the familiar and easy-to-use platform, Yale Course Search.

Project Manager Jaime Tryon was involved in supporting the implementation, which was not without its struggles. Access to the right vendor resources, the COVID-19 pandemic, limited time, philosophical differences between the vendor and Yale, and other challenges arose. However, once they decided to use the agile methodology, and track their work in the JIRA ticketing system, they managed to overcome those issues.

Given that all the benefits and key features have been realized, the project is a success. In addition, they strengthened their partnership between the University Registrar’s Office and ITS, greatly improved their documentation and collection of data, and are planning to use the data to be more strategic with future registration periods. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with one person saying, “Yale ITS performed magic.”

Introducing the Talent Acquisition Request Form (a.k.a. TAR)

Mark Manton shared an update on TAR, the workflow tool designed for ITS employees to request, record, gate, process, and control the flow of open positions through the recruitment process. This recently launched tool (developed with input from Finance, Human Resources, and ITS staff) was built by Developer Matt Coshal and Custom Application Development Manager Harry Shyket. Harry noted that the tool utilizes governance, processes, and learnings from previously developed applications, which resulted in a more efficient launch. Harry also thanked the other members of the development team, including:

• Program/Project Manager Becki Schneider
• Contract Developer Nestor Rodriguez
• QA Consultants, Abimael James and Rodrigo Aguilar
• User Experience Designer Mike Tullo

Harry also acknowledged the following individuals who helped to develop the application:

• Program/Project Manager Becki Schneider
• Contract Developer Nestor Rodriguez Ayala
• QA Team Consultants Abimael James and Rodrigo Aguilar
• User Experience Designer Mike Tullo

Mark mentioned that they plan to implement new features, such as reporting and exporting, for future versions of the form.

Ask John Anything

No questions were asked of John, but he provided an update on forthcoming strategy discussions. He shared that “the SLT has met a few times to discuss strategy and an invitation has been issued for this group later in June (the first of several meetings this summer) to review the strategic anchors, data from the listening tour in the fall and winter, other considerations that impact our long-term direction, and the results of the MISO survey.” He added that “these inputs will drive a review of the strategic anchors and a revised set of objectives for FY23, including a potential revision of the anchors and associated descriptions, which will drive the next 3-5 years of our work.”

The next IT Leadership Team meeting will take place on June 29.