Executive Summary: Organisational Development in IT (Bex Lewis)

This pilot supported the implementation of Wimba within the University of Winchester and drew on the experiences of IT implementation at Middlesex University and of change and organisational development from the Organisational Development in HE Group (specifically a member from the University of Loughborough).

The main lessons have been:

• The relevance of general change concepts to IT implementation projects.
• The similarities between the experiences in the different institutions.
• The need for a flexible structure; not everything can be solved at the outset.
• The need to share experiences, both within institutions and across institutions, so removing the ‘silo’ culture.
• The importance of a very visible top management commitment.
• The need to demonstrate clear benefits to staff if they are to be actively involved, using a mix of media and face-to-face methods.
• The need to recognise the huge pressures that staff are experiencing.
• The importance of recognising the psychological impact of past projects, and ongoing commitment to them, when implementing new initiatives.
• That the usual early adopters will be readily involved but that far more thought needs to be given to reaching the uninterested. Remember the four types of users who will respond in very different ways:
  • Enthusiasts
  • Pragmatists
  • Traditionalists
  • New Luddites
• That such initiatives call for significant changes in personal practice and – at least in the short run – for an increased workload.
• The usefulness of including the adoption of new technologies as a topic within annual reviews
• That the project framework was especially useful in highlighting the importance of change management and encouraging us to seek to apply general change concepts to IT.
• That it is essential to find benefits that make sense to the staff who are having to work in the changed environment and selling these benefits to the staff . The arguments that count are likely to relate to saving time and improving the student experience. If the initial benefits are not convincing, adapt your approach
• Recognise the workload pressures on staff and run short interventions at times that suit the staff.
• Offer ‘facilitation time’ where people can practise what they have undertaken in the training – so workshops can’t be stand alone.
• Recognise the huge variety of interests that are involved in major IT projects.
• That anyone leading or supporting a major IT change project needs to recognise that organisations are actually very fragmented and the strategies that will work with one discipline may well not work with another.
• Situations vary so much that no single approach is likely to be useful in all cases and hence one of the key skills is deciding which model is concept is appropriate when.#

The information above forms the initial stage of a document submitted to the University of Strathclyde today, in fulfillment of participation in a JISC project, considering the organisational development and people-focused needs to take into account when implementing IT projects.

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