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This month, we are firegazing with.
CIO Wendy Bussen
Ranked 15th on the biggest user of IT in New Zealand, AUT's IT directorate services some 2000 staff and 26,000 students. For nine years until her departure in November last year, CIO Wendy Bussen ran the 85-strong directorate working across three campuses, and maintaining the networks, servers and some 5,500 desktop PCs and 800 laptops.
iTools caught up with Wendy the week before she left AUT in late 2005 to take up a new role as General Manager Corporate Services at Auckland Regional Council.
"We've come a long way," could well be Wendy's final song. In her time at AUT, her team have replaced the network twice, rebranded, built and maintained the website twice, and just recently, installed a university-wide Voice over IP (VOIP) system.
Her triumphs include scaling the infrastructure - hardware, software and people - to cope with rapid growth; advancing a customer service culture in IT; introducing best practice in project management; and building up the IT capability of the university.
Another of Wendy's legacies is that in just three years, AUT has built a projects office within Information Systems that is revolutionising the way major initiatives are undertaken.
In the past, "There were only pockets of project management disciplines," says Wendy. "AUT changed from being an institute of technology to a university, and was growing at an average rate of 7 percent per annum. Changes had to be made to meet the demands of the future".
Putting in place a projects office and project management methodologies was all about making university-wide change more manageable.
For Wendy, there were two fundamental drivers to setting up a projects office. "Firstly, we needed to manage the requests coming into the IT team or work out how we were going to prioritise our resources, timeframes and budgets.
"Secondly, we needed to benchmark best practice. As a university, we needed to review the rigours and disciplines associated with implementing large-scale projects. I saw it as my role to build up this capability."
Wendy structured the IT directorate into an IT client services department and created an Information Systems (IS) department. Convinced that IT projects would be a driver of strategic change across the university, she appointed an experienced project manager Lance Steven to establish a Projects Office.
Together with the General Manager she introduced an Information Systems (IS) Steering Committee alongside the Projects Office to provide high-level governance for all IS capital projects - with other steering committees reporting into it.
Creating visibility and transparency across projects, and having a tool that does this, is key to achieving outcomes on time and within budget, according to Wendy. AUT adopted web-based tool, iTools Control to provide this visibility in 2004.
"For sound governance of projects it is important to minimise risk and to push this through to steering committee level. It forces sponsors to think about the issues that help mitigate risks."
iTools was deployed initially to the IT Services Directorate. As an example, the tool was used for AUT's major Voice over IP (VOIP) project to replace the entire PABX system with new technology.
"We used iTools at a steering committee level to gain visibility over the VOIP project. iTools helped us identify the risks and all the tasks that needed doing to meet deadline," says Wendy.
AUT's Projects Office has made great strides since its inception having racked up almost 400 projects on iTools' projects register.
Just some of the projects run with support from the Projects Office and on iTools include:
- The introduction of AUT Online, a flexible learning platform for students
- AUT's student portal
- Service Enhancement project introducing the IT Infrastructure Library
- AUT's academic timetabling project - changing the way academics do their timetabling
Wendy's final piece of advice for people going into IT leadership positions: Make sure that you have the right team in place. Then you can take on greater risks with confidence and reap greater gains.
Wendy took up the role of General Manager of Corporate Services at Auckland Regional Council in November 2005.
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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