What a Thorough Approach Looks Like
It is clear that preventing software portfolio sprawl is critical for higher education institutions to ensure efficient and secure operations. Therefore, an approach that inventories software and establishes a framework for retiring solutions based on a scoring mechanism tailored to the institution becomes a necessity. This should be done in the following manner:
Initial Assessment and Discovery
The process begins with a scoping call to gather information about the institution's current systems and organizational structure. This is followed by researching the institution's website to identify available applications, reviewing the IT page, and requesting a list of known software. The second phase involves in-depth discovery sessions with middle managers, team leads, and frontline users through interviews, surveys, and, if necessary, secondary interviews to ensure comprehensive information gathering.
Deliverables and Outcomes
The assessment sheds light on the institution's software landscape, understanding software costs and equipping the institution with tools for ongoing software inventory management. The institution receives a comprehensive list of software costs, a disposition model for software, and tools for future software acquisition and depreciation. This increased awareness of software costs and usage aligns the software portfolio with institutional goals, providing governance and procurement tools to prevent a regression to previous practices.
Key Participants
Middle managers, including web personnel, core infrastructure teams, application specialists, help desk staff, and media services, are involved from a technological standpoint. Engaging with team leads and frontline users ensures a comprehensive perspective. A cross-section of users is recommended for a holistic understanding.
Management of the Assessment
The client’s sponsor serves as the client's point of contact, arranging interviews that typically last 45 minutes to an hour for small groups and may involve up to 13 participants in larger sessions. Follow-up calls are conducted if necessary. Depending on the institution's size, up to 30 interviews with various stakeholders may be conducted. Surveys are also utilized to gain additional insight.
Framework and Implementation
The assessment helps build a framework for determining whether the use of a particular tool needs to be retired, remediated, replaced, refocused, refreshed, or rewarded. This service is often combined with governance services to address the identified issues. For example, if an institution has 170 systems but is unaware of 40 of them, a governance process can be implemented to assess software suitability and ensure proper procurement procedures.
This structured approach ensures a thorough evaluation of the technology portfolio, addressing redundancies, improving resource allocation, and enhancing the overall effectiveness of technology management within higher education institutions.
