The Consultancy: A Team Approach to Developing Partnerships with IT Customers Copyright CAUSE 1994. This paper was presented at the 1994 CAUSE Annual Conference held in Orlando, FL, November 29- December 2, and is part of the conference proceedings published by CAUSE. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, that the CAUSE copyright notice and the title and authors of the publication and its date appear, and that notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To copy or disseminate otherwise, or to republish in any form, requires written permission from CAUSE. For further information: CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301; 303-449-4430; e-mail info@cause.colorado.edu "THE CONSULTANCY: A TEAM APPROACH TO DEVELOPING PARTNERSHIPS WITH IT CUSTOMERS" Jan A. Baltzer, Director of Computing & Communications Pat Honzay, Coordinator of Business Renewal(TM) Activities Maricopa Community Colleges Phoenix, Arizona ABSTRACT One of the critical challenges facing any IT organization is the alignment of its services and technology applications with the overall goals and objectives of the institution. This alignment requires in-depth understanding of the customer's needs and an unbiased diagnosis of how information technologies can or cannot be used to meet these needs. In the fall of 1993, the Information Technology Services division of the Maricopa Community Colleges, created a group called "The Consultancy Team" with the stated purpose of forming partnerships with customer departments to provide a business approach to problem resolution rather than a technical approach. Over the last year, the Consultancy Team approach has evolved into broader based cross-functional teams as Maricopa has begun its APOLLO Project, a two-year partnership project between Maricopa and the Oracle Corporation for the replacement of all administrative systems at Maricopa and the joint development of a new Learner- Centered System. This session will focus on the environmental issues that created a need for the consultancy approach to partnering with customer groups, and will explain the evolution of the Consultancy Team from its original configuration to its current state, giving examples of how The Consultancy works with customer groups in both continuous improvement and business process reengineering efforts. THE ENVIRONMENT Current literature is filled with references to changes that are occurring in the management structures of today's major corporations and institutions. In their book, The Challenge of Organizational Change, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Barry Stein and Todd Jick give this opinion: "A universal model for organizations is developing, especially for large organizations, as a result of the changes we are seeing in the external environ- ment. This model describes more flexible organizations, adaptable to change, with relatively few levels of formal hierarchy and loose boundaries among functions and units, sensitive and responsive to the environment; concerned with stakeholders of all sorts--employees, communities, customers, suppliers and shareholders. These organizations empower people to take action and be entrepreneurial, reward them for contributions and help them gain in skill and 'employability.'" (1) It is unfortunate, that this description of the "new organization" of the 90's does not describe very many of our higher education information technology (IT) organizations. Every IT organization in higher education is facing three major organizational issues as we move into the middle of the 90's. These issues are: (1) the need to reassess the organizational structure of the IT department; (2) the need to reassess how IT departments interact with our customers; and (3) the need to remove boundaries within the IT organization, itself, between the IT organization and other units within the institution, and between the institution and external groups. The Need to Reassess the Organizational Structure of the IT Department IT departments need to reassess their organizational structures because it just isn't "business as usual" anymore. The move of computing power out of the computer center and into the hands of the end users has changed the role that the central IT organization is asked to play. The ways in which we have vertically organized IT staff around specific technologies or applications, is not "in sync" with the movement of our institutions toward Total Quality Management (TQM) and the accompanying emphasis on teams and teamwork. The demand for IT specialists, while at the same time, the need for generalists to deal with business-related issues, is inconsistent with the ways we have traditionally staffed our IT departments. And, finally, the old job titles and competency sets that were the mainstay of the IT department of the 70's and 80's will no longer suffice. Our IT professionals are being called upon to radically change their skill sets in both the technical as well as nontechnical areas. New job titles and new competency sets call for new organizational structures. The Need To Reassess How IT Departments Interact With Our Customers There are two major problems with the way in which IT organizations have typically related to our "customers." First, over the years, we in IT organizations have convinced ourselves that OUR customers are the business offices, the human resources departments, the admissions departments, or, in the case of academic computing, the faculty. We have lulled ourselves into believing that if we take care of OUR customers, they will take care of THEIR customers. This luxury of allowing ourselves to be one or two steps removed from a major portion of our constituencies cannot continue. Secondly, the way in which we listen to, communicate with, and serve our more traditional customers within the institution--the human resources and business offices, the student services and admissions department, the faculty, etc.--must change. We must recognize that the leadership and sponsorship role of information technology initiatives is shifting away from the IT organization and into the user community, and that identification of the real owners and customers of technology-based systems must be recognized. We must focus more on the customer/owners of the technology systems rather than on the technology itself. The Need To Remove Boundaries In higher education institutions, separate internal organizations have historically been established to deal with academic vs. administrative computing, or voice vs. data communications, or audio visual services (i.e., video) vs. computing. In the past three to five years, however, technology developments that merge voice technologies with computing such as touch tone registration or computer-based facsimile, not to mention the common network infrastructure needs of voice and data communications, have blurred the lines of responsibility for these technologies. Technology advances in the transmission of digital video across local and wide area networks have resulted in new applications for desktop video conferencing and multi-media instructional delivery. Networks and the hardware/software connected to them are "neutral" and can/should be used for both academic and administrative purposes. Convergence of technologies and the accompanying growth of end-user computing are forcing the IT organization to reassess how it works, moving more to a cross-functional team approach than the traditional, "dedicated" technologist approach. THE CONSULTANCY TEAM The Maricopa Community Colleges have definitely felt the impact of all three major IT organizational issues. Added to these pressures have been the pressures of antiquated administrative applications, increasing user demands, changing technology. This pressure reached its peak in the fall of 1992, following the defeat of a major bond referendum which had been designed to provide Maricopa with the resources to upgrade its infrastructure, administrative applications, and desktop technology. There was no money; the picture was grim; and the need to provide innovative solutions to customer problems had never been greater. The answer that was devised to meet these tremendous needs was the development of an internal IT group called "The Consultancy Team." The goals of "The Consultancy Team" were: 1) to link IT applications to business strategies, 2) to provide unbiased diagnosis of business information needs, 3) to provide a business-oriented approach to problem solving rather than a technology-oriented approach, and 4) to deal with the need for both specialists and generalists in meeting customer needs. In its original form, The Consultancy Team consisted of a strategic consultant, a technical consultant, a training consultant, and a quality facilitator. The role of each of these individuals was as follows: Strategic Consultant. The strategic consultant worked with customer groups to identify business problems and to access the appropriate technologists within the IT organization to provide solutions. The strategic consultant convened the team and created the agenda for the meetings. This individual was also responsible for documenting the process through team notes and flow charting tools. Technical consultant. The technical consultant provided initial technical support for the strategic consultant and assisted in identifying and documenting the technical expertise that might be required for the business solution. Training consultant. The training consultant assisted in the development of training programs, job aids, etc. in support of identified business solutions Quality Facilitator. The quality facilitator facilitated group discussions and assisted the strategic consultant in group problem-solving analysis and activities. When a business problem area was identified, the consultancy team worked with a cross-functional team to identify the "true" business problem and to identify possible alternative solutions. The key members of the cross-functional team were the business area experts, individuals who either worked in the business area on a day-to-day basis or were impacted by the business area. In addition, the team included one or more of the following "types" of individuals: systems programmer, network professional, ad hoc reporting specialist, and possible vendor partners. The initial work of the team process utilized a continuous improvement approach. The team documented the existing processes and sought opportunities for improvements. The process of questioning and analyzing the business area for this level of detail provided an opportunity for the team to see areas of redundancy or other inefficiencies which could be improved. The potential solutions were not always technical solution but also included modifications of the user's processes. THE APOLLO PROJECT In July of 1994, the Maricopa Community Colleges signed a contract with Oracle Corporation to replace all of our administrative systems including human resources, financial records, student information and electronic mail. One component of the contract includes reengineering the current processes which are traditionally considered to be part of a Student Information System. Axiom is the subcontractor providing the consulting services for the reengineering effort using a methodology that they call Business Renewal(TM). As a result of the Oracle contract and the commitment to utilize Axiom's Business Renewal(TM) methodology, Maricopa has expanded it's team approach to involve additional individuals from within IT department and from the ten Maricopa colleges. Applying the knowledge gained from The Consultancy Team, the APOLLO project teams have been expanded to include the following roles: a customer project coordinator paired with an IT coordinator, business area experts with cross- functional representation, a renewal analyst (our prior strategic consultant), a trainer/recorder, a technology lead, an operations lead, a database administrator, a data administrator, a designer/developer and a network administrator. Each individual on the team has a role to play in addition to his/her responsibilities as a team member. The first phase of the APOLLO project included the establishment of four early victory teams. These early victory teams provided the opportunity for the team members to "practice" their roles before proceeding to work on the major project components of APOLLO, particularly the expansive process of rethinking the ways we serve learners and the development of the new Learner-Centered System (LCS) - formerly referred to as Student Information System or SIS. During the Spring semester of 1995, the LCS Renewal project teams will be identified and will begin documenting the "to be" activities for our future "Learner-Centered System". The activities will be analyzed for value added based on cost of the innovation as well as time spent on task. The process will also review the organizational structure required for the "to be" process and the impact it will have on personnel. By Fall semester, 1995, the design and development of the new Learner-Centered System will begin and lead to implementation by Winter of 1996. CONCLUSION Through our research we have found that there is no "cookbook" approach to the process of using cross-functional teams to better serve our IT customers. Each of our teams is taking the tools and techniques we have learned and is applying them in ways appropriate for the scope of the team. We have learned that the team concept is an effective way of analyzing and documenting the business area processes before reaching the conclusion of automating the process. The initial teams have been a learning experience for all of the participants. The knowledge gained will be applied to future teams in the form of modification and clarification of team roles and team processes. The end result, we believe, will lead to a solution that is customer focused, with joint support from both the customer community and the IT organization. Footnote 1. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Barry Stein and Todd Jick, The Challenge of Organizational Change (New York: The Free Press, 1992), p. 3.