In the most recent IT Insights, I wrote about some of the new roles that have been created to help support IT Stewardship and make it successful. In today’s blog, I discuss roadmaps and the importance of dovetailing multi-year, departmental IT planning with the University Strategic Framework.
An IT Roadmap is a tool that helps identify and align technical work with strategic goals.
The process of developing a roadmap is beneficial to a department since it helps accomplish strategic goals. Roadmaps are built from various lenses since goals are developed holistically. Once goals have been clarified, we develop projects and initiatives to support these goals. A business case is developed for each project to determine the benefits, impact, risk, cost, funding sources, and people.
An IT roadmap uses a Gantt chart to graphically display ideas, improvements, and initiatives that are important to a department.
Each Stewardship Committee uses the business cases to prioritize projects in their portfolio. The prioritized projects are assembled into an enterprise portfolio which is submitted to the IT Executive Committee. After making any needed adjustments, the portfolio is ultimately submitted to the Budget Working Group for approval to fund costs not covered by departmental budgets.
Some of this planning will encompass only the next 12-18 months. Once IT Stewardship is fully functioning, departments will be asked to plan 3-5 years in advance. Developing a multi-year plan will ensure the university prioritizes work and invests in efforts that advance the University Strategic Framework.
We have made impressive strides with IT Stewardship in the last year. As we continue to focus on acting as one university, we will be able to deliver solutions that benefit Notre Dame strategically while also maintaining critical, current solutions.
Yours in ND,
Jane