Triple constraint: Choose two
Tables generated:
Project management: Tables report out
- Top 3 reasons why projects fail
- Top 3 reasons why projects succeed
- 3 creative/innovative practices
Here’s what we heard…
Challenges or Minuses/Failures
- Scope creep
- Lack of executive support/buyin
- Exceeding talent pool capabilities
- Customers go out to bid; cheapest vendor says they can do everything they need, cannot
- Lack of requirements
- Insufficient milestones
- Inappropriate delegation
- Lack of appropriate resources
- Lack of specific planning
- Distraction of day to day duties
- Failure to delegate
- Poor communication
- Lack of knowledgeable manager
- Lack of resources including time
- Lack of meeting agendas
- Lack of funding and expected to do a lot with a very little
- Missing or vague scope
- Lack of communication plan
- No clear definition of goals and stake holders
- Inadequate resources
- Poor communication to stakeholders
- Poor leadership
- Needs analysis
- Lack of re evaluation
- Changes of management/direction
Success/Plusses
- The right manager
- Knowledgeable manager
- Realistic objectives and budgets
- Clearly defined goals
- Strong champion
- Adaptive culture
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Strong communication plan
- Customer involvement and engagement
- Champion exists
- Good business analysis (what not how)
- Help train people on wire frames
- Ask for requirements not functionality at first
- Early iterative process
- Large planning phase can be beneficial
- Skill availability
- Being able to put things on hold and delineate a time
- Use of collaboration tools
- Good agendas
- Gatekeeping of new requests
- Get IT involved early
- Buy in
- Sponsorship
- Appropriate resources
- Good transparency with customers
- Shared responsibility
- Communication
- Clearly defined requirements i.e. what is it supposed to do at the end
- Training
Creative
- Chunking projects
- Motivation by food
- Ongoing support and training
- Branding
- Motivation
- Incentives
- Include different levels of staff i.e. use more junior staff to projects to add unique perspectives
- Use LMS site as educational tool
- Using technology for advantage
- Allowing for creative freedom in the team
- Transparency
- Adjust approach and tailor communication based on participants
- Stand up and walking meetings
- Agreed upon scope documents i.e. sign off on understanding
- Continuous re-evaluation
- Allocation of responsibilities
- Openness to change
Just before lunch, tables reported out on key issues for higher education; they included:
- continued finanacial instability
- demographics
- international students
- state schools (small and large) will probably benefit
- small schools have a huge push on development and alum relationships to try to survive
Comments:
- interesting to read about higher education from a financial sector perspective
- most institutions have experienced more competition lately
- tuition and financial aid:
- financial aid: grants or loans (must be paid back)
- out-of-state, out-of-country pay full tuition
- average student gets 42% aid
outside pressure forcing higher ed to reassess
- Harvard/MIT edX announcement means $60million investment for 3 online courses.
- expectation that “life is a video game”
- pressure from Congress and parents ($200K per child to go to college)
- sandwich generation
- health care costs
- credit rating of a college is more important now! Determines whether you get money, and whether you are accredited.
Table discussion and sharing: Key credit trends facing higher education
- What key issues will impact higher ed?
Table teams worked through a budget exercise.
Teams reported on outcomes which included projects, savings through competitive, cuts to professional development, charge-back models, phased upgrades (paced swap-out), thoughtful use of capital funds.
… and process of making such decisions as part of a group.
Some take-aways from the Budgeting exercise:
- Most participants in this cohort report they do not have access to budget information. We encourage you to ask for it!
- a sense of humor is important
- be flexible; you’re going to need to move money around
- relationships matter. talk with your CIO, CFO, etc. before you need t have tougher conversations
Budget and Finance
5/10/12
Discussion notes, cw
Management Series: table discussions 5/10/12
Karnack exercise: collect 3×5 cards
Discussion of balance sheet and its components
Review of Teachum University balance sheet
Income statement’s three basic components:
- revenue: tuition, non-acad summer, conf, athletics
- expenses
- profit
Formula: revenue – expenses = income
Sources of funds
- alum: what your alum participation rate?
- patents: be sure you have a license transfer office
- tuition and feesdining
- endowment fun aid
- gifts
- grants
- printing
- athletics
- employee donation
- health services
- dining
- state distribution
- interest on sale of bonds
- rental (ex. housing, land)
Uses of funds
- marketing, recruitment, orientation
- classroom supplies (ex. robots)
- utilities/physical plant
- maintence
- financial aid
- staffing (payroll, health insurance)
- library database desc
- payment in lieu of taxes (pilot)
- student activities
- advising
- office supplies
- athletics
- health services
- dining
- faculty salaries
- prof dev and travel
- speakers (ex. commencement)
- networking/IT
- student government
- media revenue (NCAA)
- growth
- depreciation of capital expense
Review of Learnum University Income Statement
statement of cash flow: operating, financing, investing covers a period of time – typically a year
Introduction
The curriculum for this series is targeted to early-stage leaders: recently-appointed or aspiring IT managers or supervisors. The program focuses on the practical knowledge and skills needed to succeed in management and leadership in higher education. Topics to be covered in the first series include: interpersonal communication skills; budget and finance; managing time and priorities; project management; managing up; and performance management.
The program is a three-day series. When registering, you must commit to attending all three days; the dates are September 15, October 6, and November 10 of 2011 of 2011. Each day’s program will run from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm.