Case Studies - Examples of Excellence
The University of California at Santa Cruz
Challenge - Consolidate 24 separate IT departments into a single unit
Constraints - Budget reduction
People involved - Over 200
Timeline - Approximately one year
Internal partners - Campus Ombuds, Vice-Provost of IT, various senior IT staff.
At stake - future ability of UCSC's IT infrastructure to support not only student and admin functions, but critical faculty projects that bring in tens of millions of dollars in grant funding.
What We Did - A thorough survey of the needs of all department heads, members of faculty, administrative staff and students. Then, using a series of carefully designed World Cafés for each group, we identified the core competencies, the areas of greatest uncertainty, and the questions that needed to be explored in order to move forward in each group.
This allowed us to construct a “conversational roadmap” through the complex maze of conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders as well as the technical systems complexity that required careful consideration.
A by-product of our approach was creating the opportunity for trust and accountability to emerge and support a healthier workplace culture.
The Result - Initial consolidation phase saw very little interruption or diminishment in services, minimum staff reduction, and high employee satisfaction for how they were included in the process.
Additional benefit - There is now an effort to bring World Cafe conversations to challenging issues facing the University on a regular basis.
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