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 Corporate vs Education: are they so different?
We talk to Massey’s new Projects Office Director Kevin Argyle
In August 2005, Massey University welcomed new Projects Office Director Kevin Argyle into its ranks. Prior to joining Massey, Kevin had seven years in the dairy industry, most recently at Fonterra where he helped establish Fonterra Business Services and its Programme Office.
Working in a tertiary institution like Massey, and running university-wide projects presents the same challenges as working in a big corporate - or more - thinks Kevin. Why? Because tertiary providers like Massey tend to be big – in fact, bigger than most of New Zealand’s corporate sector. Nearly a third of the top 15 users of IT in New Zealand are universities.
And they are complex – spread across faculties, campuses, and user types from students to academic staff. Massey, for instance, is the ninth biggest user of IT in New Zealand, and is spread across three campuses and five colleges, with some 3,000 staff and 37,000 students.
This complexity translates into complex projects run on a multi-campus, multi-college basis. For example, Massey’s Projects Office is currently redeveloping the Student Management System (SMS), creating end-to-end processes around the whole student experience, from enrolment to fees to exams, graduation, etc.
The complexity is heightened by the fact that universities have a tradition of operating as separate faculties or colleges – often like businesses in their own right.
Kevin says, “Coming from the corporate sector, I am looking for efficiencies and creating end-to-end processes. Universities have a special culture. The focus is on teaching, learning and research excellence. This unique culture needs protecting, while the support infrastructure and business processes that wrap around it need to be made efficient and end-to-end.”
Massey’s projects office was set up in 2001 to implement the migration of Wellington Polytechnic into Massey. Today, Massey’s projects office has 15 staff that are committed to a number of important projects including the SMS project, a new content management system and a payroll HRIS system. “We’ve developed a project management methodology and we are now implementing tools – such as iTools Control - to support best practice,” says Kevin.
Kevin believes the way forward for Massey’s projects office is to offer project management support as a service. “We are looking at taking our projects office to the next level. We want to lead best practice project management methodology and mentor others across the university, helping them with things like quality assurance of project plans.”
They have just taken on iTools Control, which Kevin believes is “right for where we are at, and will give us greater transparency and clarity around projects and reporting”.
If you want to find out more about how IT is evolving Projects Offices across the tertiary sector, download the white paper ‘Projects Offices Move up the University Value Chain’ at www.itoolscontrol.com
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