On Monday, June 6, CI's IT Policy & Planning Committee met to review the outcomes of the inaugural spring 2016 major project & procurement review cycle. Michael Berman presented the final approved project request list to the President's Cabinet on 6/6, and received positive feedback.

66 project requests were received and reviewed during the spring 2016 cycle. Of the 66 requests, 32 (48%) were approved to continue (or to begin). The remainder were postponed until additional IT resources become available. Postponed project requests may be re-submitted by each division for review during the next cycle. You may view the final spring 2016 approved project list here.

We are also pleased to announce that the fall 2016 project review cycle is now open, and the submission period runs from June 1 - July 15.  Major projects & procurements submitted for this cycle are expected to kick-off in early spring 2016. 

One significant change we've made for the fall cycle is that the project request will be submitted electronically (via TeamDynamix), in replacement of the MS Word form used previously. This update should help streamline electronic collaboration on new project requests and facilitate the submission process. Melissa Bergem, T&C Project Coordinator, has been meeting one-on-one with the DPCs to review the new submissions process.  

The deadline for DPCs to submit their draft project list to T&C for review during this cycle is 5:00PM on July 15. Requests received after July 15 shall not be evaluated by T&C during this cycle. More importantly, major projects or procurements which fail to be submitted during this cycle are not likely to be completed during the 2016-17 fiscal year. 

Please contact Peter Mosinskis at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu with any questions. 

Our division is initiating these changes because our current processes aren't sustainable, mostly because we don't have strategic alignment at the campus level for our largest, most complex project & procurement requests. This means that as an organization, T&C is getting bogged down by uncoordinated requests from campus organizations for same small, finite set of information technology resources. These resources are being affected by inefficiencies, waste, conflict and delays related to constantly shifting priorities, so we are taking steps to improve the way we manage these processes.

Stephen Covey provided a great analogy about prioritization called "The Big Rocks of Life" which is illustrated here. This principle underlies the goal of our changes: to focus on the high-value, high-impact activities that must be done first.

We met this Thursday with project requestors, sponsors and stakeholders to discuss these changes. You can watch a video presentation about the forthcoming changes, or plan to attend an upcoming information sessions (dates TBD).

At the meeting, we shared a one-pager (in PDF format) summarizing these changes with the attendees.

We also launched an updated T&C procurement web site, which describes a 7-step process to successfully complete procurement of IT-related products and services. 

Finally, today we published an updated business practice on IT project and procurement governance, which goes into a lot of detail about how our new project & procurement request process is supposed to work. 

This is a big change, and we don't expect the first iteration to work perfectly. In fact, we expect there to be some problems that we have to work around. If you have any questions, or can think of any ways in which we can improve the speed, quality or efficiency of our process, please contact me at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu.  

On behalf of Michael Berman and all of the staff in the Division of Technology & Communication, I  appreciate your patience, feedback and ongoing support as we transition to this new process, and thank you for being our valued partners in creating an exceptional University.