The university’s IT department believed it was delivering strong service. The rest of campus, surveyed at the same time, told a very different story. Layered on top was a leadership transition: a newly appointed executive with no IT background was inheriting the department and needed to know which version of the story to build on before she could act.
Case Study
A new executive now leads IT on evidence, not opinion.
This university’s new technology leader inherited an IT department with strong internal reviews and a campus full of complaints. We built the independent, data-driven assessment that showed her which story held up, and the roadmap to act on it.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Education
Organization size:
~ 3,300-5,700 faculty & staff
Services:
Organizational Design
Technology Strategy & Portfolio Management
Enterprise PMO & Portfolio Management
Technology Strategy & Portfolio Management
Enterprise PMO & Portfolio Management
The Challenge
IT rated itself highly, but the campus didn’t agree.
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Self-ratings and user ratings told two different stories
When surveyed, IT staff rated their own service delivery highly across the board. The campus community that depended on those services rated the same dimensions very differently, and no one could say for certain whether the gap was a performance problem, a communication problem, or both.
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Every prior assessment had been picked by the people being assessed
Past reviews of the department had been selected or vetted by IT leadership itself, which meant the business community never fully trusted the findings, regardless of what they said.
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A structure built around people, not around what the university needed
The department had grown organically around individual roles and historical accident rather than around a deliberate capability model, leaving gaps that were hard to see from inside the organization and politically risky for a new executive to touch without evidence.
Our Approach
Structuring findings around evidence, then building a plan together.
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1
Surveyed roughly 600 people before drawing any conclusions
Ran an anonymous, systemwide survey to establish an objective baseline of service satisfaction before a single interview took place, so the data, not consultant opinion, would set the agenda.
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2
Interviewed stakeholders across every corner of campus
Split into pairs to conduct structured, on-site interviews with IT staff, deans, the chancellor’s office, and administrative leadership, using the survey results to target the questions that mattered most.
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3
Ran a half-day workshop to let leadership set its own priorities
Instead of handing over a finished report, facilitated a session where IT and university leadership reviewed the findings together and decided which problems to tackle first.
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4
Built the capability model and operating model behind the redesign
Translated the assessment’s findings into a structured map of the capabilities the department needed, then used it to redesign roles, reporting lines, and responsibilities.
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5
Stood up a PMO and an enterprise architecture approach to sustain the change
Helped the department build the ongoing infrastructure, a new project management office and a lightweight enterprise architecture practice, needed to carry the redesign forward after the engagement ended.
Value Delivered
A department the university now understands, and trusts.
Gave a new executive an evidence-based picture of what she’d inherited
Replaced dueling internal narratives with a documented baseline drawn from the university’s own people.
Realigned the IT department’s roles around actual capability needs
Restructured reporting lines and responsibilities around what the university needed the department to deliver, instead of around the historical accident of how it had grown.
Moved IT leadership from defending scores to acting on them
The same team that pushed back on early findings became active co-authors of the plan to address them.
Built the PMO and architecture practice to carry the work forward
Infrastructure the department now runs on its own, with the relationship continuing nearly two years past the original assessment.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
600
Person survey delivering the university’s first objective baseline of IT service satisfaction
18 months
Engagement spanning the initial assessment through implementation support
1
Restructured IT department completed, realigning historical reporting lines and roles around actual institutional capability needs
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