IT Leadership Team May 2024 Meeting recap

On Wednesday, May 29, the IT Leadership Team meeting met to discuss the following topics:

Next Generation Network (NGN) update

Next Generation Network, Yale’s $64M initiative to deliver a more reliable and secure method of transmitting Yale’s data, is progressing quickly and confidently. NGN Program Director Shawn Clark provided an overview of the program’s history and a look ahead at upcoming goals for FY25-26.

Despite a strong start in 2019, the program experienced stops and starts from 2020-2022 due to COVID hardships, including equipment shortages, staffing reductions, and more. However, in 2023, the program hit its stride by refining its approach. After reconfiguring the team and restocking equipment, they’ve accelerated the pace and hit major milestones, including completing the medical campus transition. Since its inception, the program has remediated 640 of 1140 network closets, transitioned 183 of 338 Yale buildings, and upgraded 5,011 wireless access points.

The team—comprised of 40 dedicated members and eight partially dedicated staff members—credits its recent successes to its focus on team culture. Several aspects of that culture include:

• Decision-making: The team makes hard yet decisive decisions to keep the work moving forward.
• Recognition: Whether connecting at a baseball game as part of the third annual NGN day or developing “meet the team” articles, they celebrate their colleagues and collective progress.
• Continuous improvement: The team learns from its experiences and puts those learnings into action. These optimizations have led to better communication plans, shorter migrations/accelerated pace, an improved website, a new program orientation, a robust stakeholder charter, a new deployment strategy, and more. 

• According to NGN Organizational Change Management (OCM) Lead Joanne Palmer, the team has leveraged a sponsor-enabled change approach model involving University sponsors at all levels. This “top-down leadership enabled approach, which starts at the highest levels with a university sponsor and program sponsor, then becomes more concentrated and granular with a campus sponsor, DSP leader, and building champion, has enabled strong alignment and key partnerships across all areas that help to inform migration planning.” A comprehensive awareness approach that focuses on early engagement with building champions through program and technical orientations, supplemented by targeted communications and posters, empowers stakeholders to access the information they need when needed.

  In FY25, the team anticipates migrating 80 buildings, including SOM and Sterling Library. Then, in FY26, the team anticipates migrating 81 buildings, including Sterling Law. Once all migrations are completed, the program will shift into operational mode and support all areas by maintaining the system.

  FY25 budget preview

  Senior Financial Analyst Michael DeAngelo provided an overview of the FY25 approved budget following its review by the Budget Advisory Group (BAG), led by Scott Strobel, and pending approval by the Board of Trustees and President Salovey.

  Beyond IT’s Operating Budget of over $130M and its portfolio budget of under $30M, additional funds were needed to support key strategic initiatives and operating priorities. DeAngelo confirmed approval for an additional $8.4M for these expenses. Some requests, such as the FY25 Operating Portfolio, were not fully funded; the request for an incremental increase of $2.7M only received $1.7M.

  Overall, the approved budget positions IT to maintain operational capabilities, scale with institutional growth and technology dependence, and maintain core coverage metrics as the campus population grows.

  Yale Software Catalog

  IT Project Manager Naomi Erwich previewed the newly developed Yale Software Catalog (software.yale.edu). Starting June 18, the Catalog will provide a single directory of software titles for students, faculty, and staff.

  When it launches, community members will benefit from a unified university-wide interface with up-to-date information on software titles. Work will continue through FY25 to improve software data management processes and expand the Software Catalog collection. Specifically, users will be able to understand:

  • How to get or use software
  • Who is eligible to use the software, with some titles being available to all audiences and others restricted by audience or need
  • Which software is integrated into other platforms
  • If their department has an instance of the software

  These updates were selected as a Balanced Scorecard Goal to “reduce frustration and improve the user’s experience,” according to Associate CIO of IT Support Services Ryan Schlagheck. To prioritize the Catalog’s functionality, Erwich said the team “conducted focus groups to understand what people liked or didn’t like about software catalogs, with the majority indicating a preference to search by software name, description, access level, and platform.” Erwich also confirmed that the team will continue conducting focus groups, collecting and evaluating feedback, and partnering with knowledge article owners to clean up their data in anticipation of AI integrations to improve, mature, and grow the collection.

  Summer Days

  ITS Finance and Business Operations Manager Cheri Ross provided an overview of IT’s second annual Summer Days promotion, offering ten weeks of events and experiences named the “Summer of Possibilities.”

  She also shared updates on incoming college interns who will be sitting on the fifth floor (both sides) and encouraged staff to welcome them to the team.

  Cheri also reminded everyone to utilize the hoteling booking system, and refer to the related process guide and floorplans, if they will be coming to 25SP and need a hoteling seat during their stay.

  Read a recent recap of these activities, which we shared in the May issue of IT Update.

  Open mic - Ask us anything

  When is AI coming?

  Director of Finance and Administration Mark Manton responded that AI is in a beta version with limited distribution, and a lot of internal activity is underway to determine budgets and tools by user group.

  The next IT Leadership Team meeting is on June 26, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.