During the week I have
had further introduction meetings with the team and with Head of Estates and Facilities and Academic Registrar. Estates are willing to work with us on a workshop with the leadership team across
Estates and Facilities to flesh out the Digital Strategy from their
perspectives. This provides an excellent opportunity to keep momentum on
the "Estates and IT working together" agenda. It may also
provide a trial run of a proposed workshop approach in other business areas if
that is felt to be an appropriate way forward.
I have pushed along the
systems/data audit work and provided updates. The team
who are tasked with this have met regularly during the week. We
have concluded with Purchasing that there will be a broader tender process
which will allow
for some expert external input, while the team ploughs on with getting the
information we have already got into one place.
On Tuesday, I travelled
up to Lancaster University who were hosting an event with cloud file and
storage provider Box. With other attendees we had a really good opportunity to quiz each other and interact with the
guys from Box. After the event, I met with the Director of
ISS and we shared some useful insight into the planning
processes which are evolving but working well at Lancaster.
We had a Leadership
Team meeting on Wednesday, and there was a very good discussion about
project management frameworks which led into a broader set of areas around
resource planning, strategy and so forth. During that session we shared some thoughts on a model for planning based
on rocks and pebbles.
On Wednesday, we also discussed service transition. There is a common language for some of the team
(around ITIL principles). Also a number of people who did not attend the training which took place 4 or 5 years ago. This is an area that could be re-booted and create a quick win. I recommend that we establish an agile continuous improvement team with a
little approved resource from the relevant operational teams This could
pay a dividend in terms of the team working but also identify time
saving and customer service opportunities.
I have updated during
the week, the draft document on developing the digital strategy - adding some
graphical content as an appendix and I hope the basis for future conversations.
Finally, we had a go at
getting some momentum behind a Christmas get together after hours. There used to be a social group that organised things which
has not been active recently. Its always difficult in a Directorate as large
and diverse as this to make things happen outside of work etc, but hopefully
this will get the team thinking about that again.
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