IT’s forthcoming strategic plan and QA testing maturity – IT Leadership Team meeting recap

The IT Leadership Team met on June 29 and discussed the following topics:

IT strategic panning

John kicked off the discussion by thanking the team for everything they’ve achieved in their last five-year strategic plan (2018-2022). With those successes underway, it is time to reset and seek new opportunities to optimize, starting in 2023. He walked the group through conversations he’s been having with faculty, deans, vice presidents, and others, and shared how he’s approaching the strategy in a new way. He finished by asking leaders to review his presentation materials and prepare for a July 14 working session, where leaders will continue to build out the plan.

Strategic anchors

In 2018, IT established strategic anchors (One IT at Yale, Service Quality, and Workplace of Choice) which supported IT’s mission, objectives, and more. Year over year, the team established 8-12 goals that mapped to these anchors using a Balanced Scorecard. Over the last five years, the foundational context of these anchors hasn’t changed – IT is still aiming for effective delivery of services, with an emphasis on collaboration and shared accountability. Further, IT continues to be an enabler of much of what Yale does as a research university, and that is unlikely to change.

Therefore, IT’s strategic anchors are likely to remain the same for the 2023-2028 strategic plan, but the way we describe those anchors will be updated. The revised descriptions, which will be refined at the July 14 working session, will focus on how we build consistency, workflow, and partnerships across the entire IT organization.

Feedback from discussions and surveys

Over the last year, John Barden has been speaking with people who informed the last five-year plan—faculty, deans, VPs, and others. He gathered information on how IT has been doing and how it can improve. The group commended IT for its service reliability and delivery, transparency and engagement, coordination and collaboration, and culture of shared accountability for success. The group also provided suggestions for what should be considered for FY23, such as maintaining a high level of quality and consistency, expanding needs in new places, clarifying decision rights, increasing recognition of the role and opportunity in data, and an appreciation for the role of support, not tools, to drive lasting change.

The recent MISO survey also reinforced a few additional opportunities, such as improving coordination across support organizations, addressing day-to-day technology needs for our virtual environment, providing more consistent faculty support, and more.

Next steps

An initial draft of the 2023-2028 plan is being formulated in partnership with the IT SLTand IT Leadership Council. As with the 2018 plan, this will include multi-year outcomes related to financials, stakeholders, internal processes, and learning and development. Further refinement to the plan, anchors, and more will occur through the summer months to have objectives solidified by August.

John ended the conversation by saying that “what I most want people to hear is that we’ve done a phenomenal job. We are not the same organization we were five years ago.”

QA testing practice maturity

Senior Quality Assurance Lead Netal Patel shared an update on her team’s journey to refining the QA Testing Practice—an FY22 balanced scorecard initiative.

To begin the process, Netal and her colleagues conducted a GAP Analysis from January through June 2022. The analysis helped her team to identify improvements, inefficiencies, quality enhancements, service refinements, and more. During the GAP analysis, they were not focused on finger-pointing, trying to find weaknesses, or causing unnecessary stress. They aimed to leverage their learnings and make organization-wide improvements.

The assessment includes the following deliverables:

• Maturity Assessment, focusing on key areas from a testing perspective (testing, processes, organization, metrics, and automation and tools), they established a rating scale to determine how to achieve a certain maturity level.
• High-Level Report, including the results of interviews with teams to identify recommendations that will drive quality and process efficiencies.
• Detailed Level Report, designed specifically for each team, and including observations like successes, opportunities for improvement, optimization benefits, and more.

Netal asked the Leadership Team to share feedback on:

• Their team’s experience with the QA testing practice.
• Challenges within their area or others that would impact the adoption of the testing practice.
• Opportunities to improve QA testing maturity for IT Services.

The group commended Netal and her team for their positive collaboration, improved engagement, and optimized business processes. They also shared a few opportunities for improvement, including providing additional training (including training on the benefits of the process), dedicating resources (to avoid retraining individuals), and capturing better metrics on optimizations.

Netal agreed to take the feedback and reach out to individuals to support the maturation of the program.

The Next IT LT Meeting will take place on July 27, 2022.