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Blog: The Do’s and Don’ts of IT Modernization in Business

We’ve all heard the buzz around IT modernization and how it supports digital business transformation. But what does IT modernization really mean? The IT modernization definition will certainly vary across businesses, industries, and personas, but it ultimately means leveraging technology to meet expanding business goals. It means aligning IT and business units to compete in today’s digital economy. It means digitizing and improving the customer experience to improve service levels and create market differentiation.

While it can be all or some of those things, it’s become increasingly clear that the likes of Amazon and Google have made modernization mandatory for organizations to increase agility and meet expanding customer demands. Let’s dive into a few of the reasons companies decide to modernize IT infrastructure and some common examples of IT modernization.

What is IT Modernization?

Consider how much telephone technology has evolved since 1876. Connecting processes began with manual switchboard exchanges and have evolved dramatically with direct dialing and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Designs and utility have gone from a two-piece handle/cradle combination to today’s internet-equipped mini-computers that fit right into our pockets.

Every step of the way, advances in phone technology (and of course, semiconductor technology) have transformed how we communicate. Embracing new technologies and processes (imagine if we still used AOL dial-up modems to connect to the internet) to modernize how communication occurs also transforms how business happens.

In much the same way, business IT modernization is the process of managing or moving away from aging software and hardware solutions and often involves consolidating systems and workflows in favor of more automated, innovative solutions. With phones, it might be taking the premise of two-way radio and modeling it into a mobile telephone.

In business, it might be the journey of how companies integrate customer order and fulfillment data. Gone (or mostly gone) are the days of taking fax, email, or over-the-phone orders and manually entering data into a back-end ERP system, and then having that system spit out acknowledgments, invoices, and shipping documents that we have to print out and fax or email back. Modern B2B integration software technologies , like EDI, automate this and speed up these order-to-cash processes.

IT modernization also means  embracing cloud , cloud-first, and data center approach, where much of the hardware and software is hosted by a third party while your business consumes as much or as little as needed. But while IT modernization often is the generic term for upgrading technologies, it also means upgrading skillsets. Modernization projects often entail applications, systems, and migrations that require IT skill current staffers may not have. To account for these resource and skills gaps, modernization might then happen in the form of managed service and as-a-service offerings.

Why Modernize?

In short, it’s about survival. The modern company must develop new processes to handle omnichannel approaches (thanks to  the “Amazon Effect” ) and gain the agility to reduce time to market. Too many businesses are held hostage by their homegrown and legacy solutions, and cannot efficiently onboard new partners and new sources of revenue. This limits their ability to scale and grow.

Organizations with the bigger company picture in mind modernize IT systems end-to-end to better achieve goals and compete in today’s business ecosystem. What we mean by “end-to-end” is integrating all inbound and outbound data flows to enable the visibility to effectively track the entire order life cycle, automate workflows, proactively troubleshoot problems, and meet customer SLAs.

Such IT modernization, with the secure data movement and data transformation capabilities that enable all manner of application and  EDI software integrations , vastly improves important revenue-generating processes, including order to cash, load tender to invoice, and procure to pay.

Examples of IT Modernization

Today’s businesses can modernize in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. Some of the most common in 2018 include:

► ERP replacement :  Electronic Resource Planning systems are the information backbone of most companies, and upgrading to a new solution (whether cloud-based or on-premise) is increasingly common as more ERP products that better align to a company’s vision hit the market.

► AS/400 decommissioning : The IBM iSeries AS/400 has been a highly dependable software solution across industries for decades, but a lack of product knowledge and integration capabilities has many companies phasing it out in favor of a more modern, user-friendly platform.

► Mergers and acquisitions/divestitures:  When businesses merge, a whole bunch of systems and processes come together under one proverbial roof, and the business often chooses to consolidate many of them onto a single integration platform. Conversely, when a divestiture happens, one or more of the divested organizations may be left without a proper EDI technology (and its associated resources), for example, and have to procure and implement a managed-service solution.

► Replacing a legacy EDI solution:  The standardized EDI format and digital file transfer transformed B2B communications when it replaced paper documents, and EDI still very much drives global commerce today. But many aging  EDI solutions , including EDI VANs, cannot deliver the modern governance, visibility, and integration capabilities in a cost-effective way that supports such important revenue-generating data flows.

► Migrating homegrown integration tools:  The custom-built solutions that facilitate your data flows are too often pieced together by layers of hand code that is development-intensive, hinders partner onboarding, and limits scalability and growth. Modern B2B integration platforms provide out-of-the-box functionality so you spend less time managing the data minutiae and more time managing your core business functions.

Best Practices for IT Modernization

When modernizing IT systems, organizations are looking to replace or improve upon existing functionality via a more simplified workflow. And, thus, it’s critically important to thoroughly understand the source system in order to properly implement the new one. Only then can businesses properly evaluate project and business needs, and lay out the goals, timeline, and overall vision for the modernization initiative.

Once these are fully understood and the migration roadmap becomes clear, organizations can carve out time and resources to:

► Develop new processes that fit your company’s current business patterns and culture ► Consult with partners and thoroughly scope the extent of map development ► Go through multiple development iterations and testing cycles to ensure a successful go-live

Services Teams for IT Modernization

Before any IT modernization happens, a host of expertise is needed to understand existing data flows and the downstream effects of any application upgrade. Some organizations may have internal resources who best understand specific data movement patterns and others may lack those resources. Either way, modernization and system migration are no small undertakings, and most organizations require at least some help.

Professional services teams are integration experts have vast experience with all type of IT modernization. Such resources are invaluable to the overall modernization effort and will help expedite the process. Professional services teams are extremely beneficial, for instance, when:

► Legacy system specs are outdated and require a lot of interpretation. ► The project requires additional development cycles because the organization is constantly “finding” new requirements. ► Customers lack knowledge of existing processes and need assistance with analysis.

These experts also are highly capable of advising on best practices and implementing process improvements, and their advice could be the difference between a direct, seamless ERP integration instead of indirect integration with intermediate tables.

Modernize Your Business

IT modernization helps drive business growth and strategy across various departments, and it frees up internal IT resources to focus on the bigger picture – the company’s core service. But IT modernization is difficult and encompasses a number of technologies, people, and processes that make the business run.

The very definition of a legacy application, as  defined by Gartner , is “an information system that may be based on outdated technologies, but is critical to day-to-day operations.” But because such solutions are so critical to the enterprise, companies often put up with the hefty time, maintenance, and support costs rather than modernize for fear of business disruption, often to the detriment of the business.

Still, you don’t want to be the business carrying the proverbial pager while everyone else has a smartphone. When the time is right for IT modernization, confiding in a professional services team will help understand your needs, simplify the effort, and accelerate the process.

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Modernizing IT for a digital era

Most companies face critical IT modernization issues, whether that means digitizing the customer purchasing experience, managing or moving away from aging software and hardware solutions, or shifting to newer technologies such as cloud-based computing, serverless computing, and microservices for delivering software.

Historically, companies have favored an incremental approach to modernizing IT—that is, addressing the most immediate points of pain and then subsequent issues as they occur. However, the threat of digital disruption is creating an urgent need for companies to modernize IT systems end to end, with the big picture in mind.

End-to-end modernization, or a holistic approach to tackling system upgrades, completely redefines how a company thinks about IT. Under this approach, the technology organization is no longer just a shared service; IT becomes a critical part of the company’s DNA, and IT leaders become trusted partners, not just service providers.

Certainly, the long-favored incremental approach to modernization may entail fewer risks: if something goes awry on a small software-development project, the harm from bugs or faulty processes can be contained and resolved before widespread issues occur. Incrementalism can also offer short-term improvements faster: through small service- or product-line changes, companies may be able to realize quick benefits in, say, customer interfaces or tasks associated with systems maintenance.

But incrementalism can also limit companies’ growth and competitiveness in some important ways. Under this approach, technology teams in different parts of the IT organization may independently address discrete systems questions involving their own areas of competence or internal business clients. They may create islands of solutions, which in turn may breed more complexity, while redundant systems and processes remain. And when companies inevitably pursue digital initiatives, weaknesses in their traditional product-development processes and IT-management systems can be exposed. Customers may experience this as missing data links, slow processing speeds, and disconnected products and services.

The end-to-end approach to modernizing IT is more effective for creating and supporting viable digital businesses (exhibit). To pursue this approach, executives must break down the change process into three critical steps: defining the target state for their IT architectures, deciding which elements of the IT landscape (systems, people, and processes) need to change, and determining the sequence and scope of change. We’ve seen some companies tackle each of these steps in isolation, often in the context of a business-unit request for a new technology-enabled feature. But relatively few companies are considering these three steps in systematic fashion, across all business units and functions, and with input from both IT professionals and business leaders.

Compared with incrementalism, the end-to-end path toward a modern IT landscape can be more risky, and potentially more expensive. In most cases, however, avoiding duplicate work leads to lower costs. It may pave the way for seamless adoption of microservices, two-speed IT, 1 1. See related articles, Oliver Bossert, Chris Ip, and Irina Starikova, “ Beyond agile: Reorganizing IT for faster software delivery ,” September 2015; Oliver Bossert, Martin Harrysson, and Roger Roberts, “ Organizing for digital acceleration: Making a two-speed IT operating model work ,” October 2015; and Oliver Bossert, Chris Ip, and Jürgen Laartz, “ A two-speed IT architecture for the digital enterprise ,” December 2014. and other emerging approaches for managing and enhancing IT architecture. And, ultimately, end-to-end modernization may ensure that companies have the right IT capabilities for decades rather than just the next few years.

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Pursuing end-to-end it modernization.

Nowadays, the technologies that support digital business activities span the entire IT landscape; companies can no longer define bright lines between front- and back-end information-systems management. The sheer volume of technologies, processes, and decisions required to build and maintain digital applications and operations means companies can’t afford to work in the same old ways. Business executives and technology professionals seeking to change their approach to modernizing IT architectures may want to focus on three core tasks.

Define the target IT state

In end-to-end modernization, business and IT leaders come together to define the target state of IT—not just for discrete business units or projects but for the entire organization. They set realistic priorities for modernization, asking questions such as: Which technology-driven projects will generate the most value for the company, in reduced cost and greater efficiency, and which would just be nice to have?

They define categories of business capabilities where processes, products, and actions can be digitized or otherwise improved through the use of technology. The overarching goals and vision at one bank, for instance, were centered on the tools and processes relating to the user experience and how to ensure that customers and potential customers could find the information they needed through the bank’s new digital channels. For an insurance firm, the highest-priority tasks and tools included those related to ensuring compliance with emerging regulations. And for a retailer, the target end state was better customer segmentation, which required moving toward a centralized database and advanced-analytics capabilities.

What’s most important is that the IT organization partners with the business on this step. According to recent McKinsey research, IT organizations that actively collaborate with the rest of the business to shape an overall business strategy that effectively employs technology tend to perform better on a number of dimensions, including provision of core services and the creation of a healthy organizational culture. 2 2. “ Partnering to shape the future—IT’s new imperative ,” McKinsey Global Business Technology Survey, May 2016. Conversations should include the CIO and top IT leadership, business-unit or business-domain leaders, and product-group owners.

Decide which changes to make across the technology landscape: Systems, people, and processes

With information about the desired target state in hand, IT leaders can consider how and whether to make specific changes to elements of the IT architecture—for instance, front-end applications, middleware technologies, or back-end servers—to help the business attain its goals. This is less daunting than it sounds. Typically, there are just a few critical systems that must be fully redesigned; effective use of application programming interfaces and middleware can mitigate the need for significant changes to back-end systems.

As a first step, the IT team should take inventory of existing applications and other technologies and identify those that can be improved, consolidated with other applications or other technologies, or decommissioned. The team should come to the table ready to ask questions such as: How much real-time data do we need to support a digital customer experience? How quickly do we need to launch new features to meet customers’ needs? How will service response times need to change? Will workload grow or shrink among groups within IT? A large telecommunications company, for instance, had to work out which elements of its IT architecture to modernize so it could launch a digital “e-care” feature for its 100 million–plus customers. The e-care feature was designed to allow users with prepaid smartphones to buy more SMS, data, and roaming services, in just a few clicks. The telco realized such a digital program would mean giving users 24/7 access to data stored in back-end servers—hence, data storage and maintenance became an immediate target area for IT modernization.

Once IT team members have explored core technology questions, they must discuss the organizational- and operating-model changes that may be required to support business efforts long term—for instance, what new team structures or skills might be required? IT leaders, business-unit heads, and critical stakeholders from adjacent business units must consider each core business capability and determine which processes, products, and activities would most benefit from modernization.

Determine the sequencing and scope of change

IT and business-unit leaders can create a clear road map for modernization efforts by having two- and three-year sequences of updates in mind and identifying measurable outcomes. Indeed, a joint IT and business team will need to be clear on business priorities and how those will affect the scope and urgency of priority IT projects. The team will need to identify technical interdependencies among various business initiatives and quantify the cost and effort associated with each incidence of systems change. The team must also have an estimate in mind of the potential business value to be gained from modernization efforts. The team can use any number of metrics to guide these discussions, such as current IT investments (cross-unit and within particular divisions), the amount of revenue being generated by certain product lines, or the potential productivity increases from digitizing certain internal processes.

Business and IT leaders can use these insights to outline the potential sequencing and scope for modernization. In some instances, it might make sense to modernize according to lines of business; in other cases, by geographic location. Either way, the modernization team can devise a timetable indicating the people and capital investments required, the agreed-upon business and IT outcomes, and budget expectations. It is critical to get CEOs and executive-committee members’ input on this financial aspect of IT modernization; they will, after all, be the ones overseeing the IT modernization team. CIOs must help CEOs and board directors understand that the majority of the IT project budget may need to be devoted to modernization efforts over a two- to three-year period. The level of that commitment cannot be overstated. For end-to-end modernization efforts to succeed, top management must be clear about the spending required, and they must sign off on those budget requirements before any real work can start.

Realizing end-to-end improvement: Case study

Most companies have a sense of what they want their modern IT architecture to look like. And all are familiar with the core building blocks they can use to achieve that goal. Still, an end-to-end IT modernization program will look different in different industry and company contexts.

For a regional bank, the primary objective for modernizing IT was to introduce digital processes in the company. Its secondary objective was to cut costs; margins had been slipping the past five years. After considering the technology and management landscapes, as well as issues with timing and scope, a team of IT leaders and business executives at the bank developed and executed a series of staged initiatives designed to produce both quick wins and a blueprint for further modernization over the next three years.

As a first step, the team considered its current IT capabilities and its target state of IT operations—looking not just at discrete technologies but also considering potential business needs over the next two to five years. Then it made a series of decisions to try to close the gap between the two.

Two ways to modernize IT systems for the digital era

The bank had been using an incremental approach to upgrades that left it with an aging, fragmented IT architecture, with multiple point-to-point connections between front-end applications and back-end transaction systems. Because there were so many interfaces and redundant gateways, customers’ banking experiences varied wildly. And because the IT architecture was so fragmented, it had been hard for the bank to design and build new software and services and launch them quickly. Software development was done using the traditional waterfall method; agile and DevOps approaches to development were used in only one pilot project. The bank’s data were stored in disparate systems across the bank, so there was no easy, single view of the customer, and, as a result, the bank was not able to mount effective marketing campaigns. What’s more, it was difficult, and time intensive, to respond to regulatory inquiries because risk officers at the bank had a hard time finding the information they needed.

The team’s assessment of the technology landscape revealed the fragmentation issues, and as a result, the bank consolidated its front-end applications and built a cleaner integration layer. Specifically, the bank mapped application redundancies and identified all point-to-point interfaces. It documented its desired future capabilities and design principles—for instance, the ability to write code once and use it everywhere, and minimal interdependencies among interfaces—and used that as a guide to determine which parts of the existing system could be reengineered, discontinued, or rebuilt from scratch. The bank built a multichannel management module, and the most advanced branch was reengineered so that all channels could use its components. Those components that shared similar functionality were grouped together under one module. To avoid writing these modules from the ground up, the most advanced and comprehensive elements were reused and reengineered (if needed). Old components were decommissioned and new ones set up and tested in a relatively short period of time. Front-end integration layers were migrated to the cloud and managed using agile methodologies.

In response to the team’s review of business and IT capabilities and operations, the bank introduced agile development practices across the organization (not just in a pilot). This move had a second-order benefit of attracting new talent; developers were lured in by the promise of getting modern and challenging assignments, as well as the chance to be creative, rather than simply taking requirements from the business and making them happen in a mainframe environment. The bank also established a data repository and built a platform for master data management and analytics. This change allowed the bank to target customers more accurately with products and services. It also made it easier for risk officers to find information required to fulfill regulatory requests. By creating a single hub for collecting, processing, accessing, and delivering data, the bank has been able to continually update its analytics programs and methodologies, ensuring that it will be able to adapt as the market and customer needs change.

An incremental approach to systems upgrades may continue to be optimal for companies that believe they will be bought out or that are in industries that aren’t anticipating substantial technology changes. For most companies, however, this will not be the case. Technologies and processes are only becoming more sophisticated as companies explore digital business opportunities. Therefore, IT organizations can no longer continue to implement system changes piecemeal, always backtracking and reengineering to correct for uncoordinated modernization efforts. They must join with the business units to think systematically about how to phase in digital technologies and faster processes while still supporting business day to day. The companies that don’t do this risk falling behind competitors and further impeding any ability they may have to catch up in the long term.

Driek Desmet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Singapore office, Markus Löffler is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Stuttgart office, and Allen Weinberg is a senior partner in the New York office.

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Technology Upgrade Plan Template

What is a Technology Upgrade Plan?

A technology upgrade plan is a strategic plan designed to help IT teams upgrade the organization's technology infrastructure. This plan should contain objectives, actions, and measurable targets that outline the steps and goals necessary for the successful upgrade of the technology infrastructure. It should also include a timeline for when the objectives and actions need to be completed in order for the technology upgrade plan to be successful.

What's included in this Technology Upgrade Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Technology Upgrade Plan template for?

The Technology Upgrade Plan template is for IT teams who want to create a plan to upgrade their organization's technology infrastructure. This template will help them to create a plan that outlines the objectives, actions, and measurable targets that need to be achieved in order for the technology upgrade to be successful.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

A focus area is a broad category that outlines the overall goal of the technology upgrade plan. Examples of focus areas could include Technology Infrastructure Upgrade, Cloud Infrastructure Upgrade, or Business Application Upgrade. Each of these focus areas should contain objectives, actions, and measurable targets that are necessary for the successful upgrade of the technology infrastructure.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Objectives are measurable, actionable goals that need to be achieved in order for the technology upgrade plan to be successful. Examples of objectives could include Streamline Network Connectivity, Increase Network Security, Improve Cloud Security, or Enhance Cloud Storage.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are measurable targets that need to be achieved in order for the objectives to be completed. Examples of KPIs could include Increase Network Bandwidth, Reduce Network Attack Vectors, Increase Account Protection, or Increase Maximum Storage Volume.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Projects, or actions, are the steps taken to achieve the KPIs. Examples of projects could include Upgrade Ethernet Cabling, Install Firewall Security System, Deploy Multi-Factor Authentication, or Increase Storage Capacity.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

Cascade is a strategy execution platform that helps teams to plan, track, and measure progress on their technology upgrade plans. Cascade helps teams to organize their objectives, actions, and KPIs in an easy-to-use dashboard, and provides real-time insights into the progress of the plan. This makes it easier for teams to track and measure their progress, and to ensure that their technology upgrade plans are successful.

Successful IT Projects Begin with a Project Charter

What happens when you’ve got a reputation for getting things done? You’re ‘rewarded’ by being put in charge of challenging projects. Has it happened to you? Maybe you’re the membership director who’s tasked with managing the selection and implementation of a new association management system (AMS) or the communications director who’s overseeing a website redesign.

Managing a successful technology project definitely has its rewards:

• It looks good on your resume—which will come in handy when you’ve decided you’ve had enough 60-hour weeks.
• It provides the opportunity to improve your leadership, management, and communication skills.
• It gives you the chance to develop project management skills. And, boy, are you going to need those!

But, there’s a dark side to DIY project management. You could spend 50% of your time managing the project, even more during periods of peak activity. When do you find time to handle the other responsibilities on your plate?

Then there’s the knowledge gap. Projects can go off the rails so easily when you haven’t had practice managing them. You can find tools and templates online at The Project Management Institute or with some expert-level Googling, but it’s still a challenging responsibility to take on a technology project alone without a trusty guide—like a PMP-certified DelCor project manager.

Download our guide on Requirements Analysis to make sure your team's projects succeed.

If you don’t have the resources to bring in outside help, here’s some advice for managing a technology project.

I dub thee: ‘project manager’

First things first: the project charter. The charter is the tool used to formally authorize a project to begin. It establishes the project’s purpose, high-level scope, parameters, and resources. Once approved by the project sponsor, the charter authorizes you, the project manager, to manage the project. It shows your organization’s commitment to the project as well as its commitment to provide the resources required to successfully complete it.

As the project manager, you may be responsible for writing the project charter. Or, the project sponsor or the staff with the ‘business need’ for the project writes the charter. If that’s the case, insert yourself early in your role as project manager to review and contribute to the charter draft. The more intimately you are involved at the start, the better positioned you will be to help ensure the project achieves desired outcomes.

The project’s advocate: the executive sponsor

Who is the project sponsor? The sponsor is the project advocate who approves the charter and authorizes resources and funding for the project. The sponsor is on the project escalation path—they step in when issues escalate. For example, they may be called upon to make difficult decisions, remove internal obstacles, hold team members accountable for their responsibilities, or approve changes to scope, time, or budget.

An executive-level sponsor is best since they can ensure top-level support, especially for a complex, cross-departmental project, such as the implementation of a new AMS. Complex projects that go forward without the authorization of an executive sponsor are more likely to fail.

The role of the project charter

Besides authorizing the project, the charter sets the guiding principles for the project and for the project manager. Developing the project charter provides the opportunity to confirm that project objectives are aligned with your organizational strategy.

The charter becomes your touchstone—you’ll refer back to it throughout the project when making decisions. For example, if several months into the project, a department head wants to add something to the project scope, you can remind her that the scope agreed upon by all key stakeholders does not include that requirement. In fact, the charter can establish exclusions to scope at the outset, for added clarity, which may save the team from retreading those questions down the line. 

The elements of a project charter

The project charter usually includes these components:

• Description and scope of the project: what the project includes and what it doesn’t
• Business case (justification) for the project: the problem(s) it will solve
• Objectives: what the final project deliverable or outcome is expected to do
• Project requirements: a high-level description of must-haves
• Performance metrics: how you will measure the project’s success
• Identification of key stakeholders: to include the sponsor, project manager, and the project team, along with their roles and responsibilities
• Timeframe: to include major milestones
• Assumptions: factors presumed true that may influence the project’s processes or outcomes, such as the assumption that the project’s human resources have the skills necessary to complete data conversion
• Constraints: limitations placed on the project such as scope, schedule, or budget—together known as the ‘triple constraints’
• High-level risks: for example, project requirements may change if new legislation is passed
• High-level budget: a summary of the budget allotted for the project

While the project charter must be approved by the project sponsor or initiator, it will serve the project well to have other key stakeholders sign the charter as well. With stakeholder approval, months from now you can point to the project responsibilities a stakeholder has agreed to for his staff, such as participating in user acceptance testing.

Putting your project charter together.

There is no one-size-fits-all standard. A charter can range from one page to tens of pages to multiple documents, as larger and lengthier projects may require more detail. In some cases, a project could be initiated via email from the sponsor, outlining all the necessary components.

Start by establishing a simple template that works for your organization’s needs. A consistent template across projects helps stakeholders become accustomed to the elements of a charter. Over time, the charter can evolve to include additional details that have contributed to project success.

The important thing is that the charter does its job of initiating the project, setting the terms that the stakeholders agree to, and providing authorization for the project to move forward with you as its assigned project manager.

If you’ve never worked with a project charter before, at first impression, it may seem like too much fuss. But a charter ensures that everyone uses the same playbook to work toward common goals. Don’t start a project without one!

As noted, requirements play a major role in the project charter—and beyond. Take a deep dive into understanding how to uncover and document them. Download our free whitepaper, Requirements Analysis: The Secret to Sanity, to learn more.

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IT Project Plan Template

Use this free it project plan template to manage your projects better.

Whether you’re developing a new system, making improvements on an existing system or upgrading enterprise applications, you need an IT plan to organize the time, cost and scope of the project.

To get that project started right, try ProjectManager’s free IT project plan template. It sets up all the phases and leaves you space to add the relevant details.

What Is an IT Project Plan?

An IT project plan details all the tasks, costs, resources, time and deliverables to reach the goal of the IT project. It can be looked at as the control panel that dictates the time, cost and scope of the project.

An IT project plan will list every deliverable, up to the final deliverable, within the scope of the project. It also defines the methodology and processes used to manage the project from initiation to closure. All the resources needed to execute the plan will be included as well.

An IT project is no different than any project. There is a specific timeframe in which to deliver the product or service. That schedule is further refined by the costs associated to complete the IT project, which is defined by the budget. Throughout the execution of the IT project, monitoring and tracking progress and performance as key to delivering on time and within budget.

Why You Need an IT Project Plan Template

ProjectManager’s IT project plan template saves time and gets you started more efficiently. It allows project managers to fill in the blanks, as all the major phases and steps of a project are already outlined. The IT project plan structures the work, aligns resources with capacity to increase productivity and gets more done with less.

Your IT project plan is also a communication tool. It tells everyone involved in the project what their roles and responsibilities are. It allows the project manager to direct the team and keep them working, while also updating sponsors and stakeholders on the progress of the work that they’re invested in.

Because the work is laid out over a timeline, the project manager is able to monitor the progress and see if the actual effort is tracking with the planned effort. If it’s not, the project manager can reallocate resources to help the project get back on schedule.

When to Use an IT Project Plan Template

The IT project plan template should be one of the first documents created right after initiating a project. It’s the first step in streamlining the project by breaking down the large, final deliverable into a series of smaller tasks.

Before you can execute an IT project, you need to have a plan to allocate resources, as well as determine how long and how costly the project will be. While some of these constraints are forecast in the initiation phase, they are more easily seen during the planning stage, which is prior to execution.

This is the point in which time, scope and costs are estimated, risk management is developed and more. It is the most important step taken after the approval of the IT project. The IT project plan template, then, is a springboard from the stated goals and objectives to how to get there.

Who Should Update the IT Project Plan Template

Your IT project plan template must be constantly updated and adjusted in response to changes in the project to remain on schedule and within the allotted budget.

The person on the project team who is responsible for managing these updates is the project manager, though depending on the organization or size of the project team, it can also be a project administrator. Whoever is tasked with updating the IT project plan template, though, it is the project manager who is the one who authorizes these changes.

Updating the IT project plan template happens when there is a change to one of the three constraints of time, cost and scope. Therefore, the project manager will have to adjust either the schedule, budget or scope of the project to respond to these changes and keep the project on track.

Use Our Free IT Project Plan Template in Multiple Views

When you have to plan for an IT project, our free IT project plan template lets you hit the ground running. Better still, you get to plan using multiple project views, all of which are updated simultaneously. Whether using the Gantt chart, sheet, kanban board, list view or calendar, you decide how to manage your IT project.

Your team will appreciate the kanban board view, which visualizes their workflow with tasks as cards and columns as stages in the production cycle. Now teams can manage their backlog and work together to plan for each sprint. Project managers get visibility into their process and can reallocate resources as needed to keep them from being blocked.

Gantt/Sheet View

Project managers can toggle between the Gantt and the sheet view. The sheet removes the timeline and gives more space to columns. You can add as many columns as you need to manage the project and then select only those you want to show up on the timeline when you go back to the Gantt view.

Same Info Across All Views

Whatever project view you prefer they are all updated simultaneously to make sure that everyone is always working on the most current version of the project plan. Wherever they are or whenever they’re working, the project view is up-to-date so there’s no unnecessary waste of time and effort.

Why Should You Use Our IT Project Plan Template?

ProjectManager’s free IT project plan template covers every step of your IT project from initiation to closure. Our free IT project plan template opens in our tool, perfect to help you get started fast.

• Plan on Gantt Charts : The IT project opens up in our Gantt chart project view, which is only one of multiple project views offered so everyone can work how they want. The Gantt is divided into columns and rows, all of which are fully customizable.
• Pre-Built Columns: Our IT project plan template is set up with the following columns: a number list to help you find what you want fast, info to add notes or attach files, task name (and subtasks), duration for the tasks, planned start date, actual finish, planned finish date, percent complete, priority, planned hours and milestones.
• Collect Project Data: The rows can then collect all the details for your IT project. For instance, the first phase might be testing, which has a duration of 21 days. Add the planned start and finish dates, priority and check the milestone box if it applies. Under testing, you can add subtasks, such as deploying a test environment, performing system tests and adding tickets, requests and bugs.
• See Progress on a Chart: Once you’ve added all the data to the IT project plan template, you’ll notice on the right side of a visual timeline has been created representing the information you filled in on the left. This timeline is automatically generated and allows you to see the project all in one place. You can then link dependent tasks, which could delay progress if not identified early in the project.
• Manage Easily: Now you’re ready to manage your IT project, adding percentage complete as your team delivers status updates and following your timeline to make sure the project is keeping to plan. The template is great, but project management software is greater, adding more functionality and improving efficiencies.

How ProjectManager Takes Your IT Project Plan Further

ProjectManager helps you organize the tasks and teams on your IT projects. You can not only plan but monitor, track and report on the project. We connect your teams, no matter if they’re working from the office or remotely, helping them collaborate better together.

See the Whole IT Department on One Page

Use the team page to view all the tasks assigned to your team in one place. View how much work your team is assigned over a day or across the week. See the priority of each and drill down to get more data on their progress, planned effort, actual effort and more.

Manage Multiple IT Projects

Managers are often tasked with overseeing more than one project, but many tools on the market can only manage one project at a time. Don’t worry, with our tool you can manage a portfolio of IT projects with our portfolio dashboard.

Similar to the real-time dashboard, the portfolio dashboard also shows you a high-level view, but of all the projects you’re working on. There are six charts updated in real time and include health, time, cost, workload, task and progress. You can even customize the portfolio dashboard to filter by status, priority, project manager or customer.

Get Deep Insights With One-Click Reports

Customizable reports let you go further into the project data. Filter reports to retrieve only the information you want to see and then generate the report with a keystroke. The live data means you’re getting a snapshot of the IT project right now, not where it was, so you can make more insightful decisions.

Get reports on portfolio status, project status, project plan, tasks, timesheets, availability, workload and variance. Every report can be saved as a PDF and shared when making a stakeholder presentation. This allows you to manage stakeholder expectations by keeping them informed.

More Free Templates to Help With Your IT Project

If you’re not ready to use ProjectManager, you might want to try more free project management templates . We have dozens that address every aspect of managing a project. Here are a few of the ones that are appropriate to IT and project planning.

Project Budget Template

Project planning means making accurate financial forecasts for the cost of the project. Using our free project budget template helps you estimate how much everything from resources to materials. It’s color-coded so you know if you’re heading into the red.

Work Breakdown Structure Template

A project has a timeline to schedule your tasks to reach your final deliverable by the deadline. But to do that you need to know every single task required to get there. That’s why our free work breakdown structure template is so important. This tree diagram captures every step of the project.

IT Risk Assessment Template

Once you execute your IT project plan template there will be risks and a project manager must be prepared to identify and resolve those issues quickly. The free IT risk assessment template allows you to collect risks and even calculate how likely they are to occur.

Related Content

ProjectManager is the only web-based software you’ll need to manage your IT project plan, but it’s also an industry hub for all things project management across many different industries. On our site, you can find weekly blog posts, tutorial videos and guides about various aspects of project management. Here are a few that are related to IT.

• 7 Steps for Effective Problem Management in IT
• IT Governance: Definitions, Frameworks and Planning
• IT Risk Management Strategies and Best Practices

If you’re planning an IT project, ProjectManager can help you make that plan, monitor its progress and track performance and even report updates to stakeholders. You also get resource management tools, timesheets and much more. Our tool is already being used to successfully run projects tens of thousands of times at organizations as diverse as NASA, the Bank of America and Ralph Lauren. Want to join them? Try ProjectManager today for free.

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Anatomy of an IT disaster: How the FBI blew it

The bureau's foiled plan for a modern it infrastructure is a tragic case of project mismanagement.

Contributing writer, InfoWorld |

Some FBI agents ruefully refer to the trilogy project, a massive initiative to modernize the FBI's aging technology infrastructure, as the "Tragedy" project. It certainly has all the earmarks of tragedy: the best intentions, catastrophic miscommunication, staggering waste.

Trilogy, as the name suggests, had three parts: an enterprisewide upgrade of desktop hardware and software; deployment of a modern network infrastructure; and an integrated suite of software for entering, finding, sharing, and analyzing case information. In a congressional hearing last month, FBI Director Robert Mueller was careful to note that the first two parts of Trilogy have been completed: no less than 30,000 computers, 4,000 printers, 1,600 scanners, 465 servers, and 1,400 routers were deployed as of April 2004.

After more than four years of hard work and half a billion dollars spent, however, Trilogy has had little impact on the FBI's antiquated case-management system, which today remains a morass of mainframe green screens and vast stores of paper records. As Senator Judd Gregg observed, "the software, which runs the hardware, is a huge problem."

The problem with that software, known as VCF (Virtual Case File), is that it isn't in production and may never be. VCF may be one of the most extreme examples of requirements bloat in IT history. What began as a fairly modest software project swelled into an all-encompassing replacement for a panoply of woefully outmoded applications and procedures. Along the way, the FBI went through five different CIOs, 10 project managers, and 36 contract changes. The result, said Senator Patrick Leahy at February's Senate Appropriations Committee hearings, "has been a kind of train wreck in slow motion."

Accounting for $170 million of Trilogy's $581 million price tag, VCF fell afoul of extraordinary circumstances --notably, the Sept. 11 attacks, which piled enormous pressure onto the Trilogy project and altered the course of VCF dramatically.

FBI representatives declined to be interviewed for this story. But thanks to the Senate hearings, a report from the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and interviews with the FBI contractor that developed VCF, InfoWorld has been given a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a colossal IT failure.

Green Screens and Filing Cabinets

Sen. Leahy offered another, more whimsical analogy for Trilogy: the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray wakes up each morning to relive the same day. Since 1997, proposals for modernizing the FBI's technology and processes have emerged again and again, culminating with Trilogy. Trilogy itself then underwent a cyclic series of evaluations and funding requests until Congress finally learned that its third leg, VCF, might never materialize.

For the foreseeable future, that leaves the FBI with its obsolete, mainframe-based ACS (Automated Case Support) system, which requires the user to traverse a dozen 3270 green screens to upload a single document. Worse, according to the OIG's report, "the ACS only serves as a backup to the FBI's paper file system [and] information within that system cannot be changed or updated."

By the year 2000, aging infrastructure alone -- including 386-based desktop PCs and 12-year-old interoffice networks -- was hobbling the FBI. In September 2000, the FBI proposed FITUP (FBI Information Technology Upgrade Project), for which Congress allocated $379.8 million, spread over an estimated three-year effort. Two months later the project was divided into three parts and renamed Trilogy.

Trilogy's requirements for desktop hardware and network infrastructure stayed relatively stable throughout the life of the project (although an additional $100 million was allocated to accelerate completion, to no avail). The software portion was a different story.

What we now know as VCF was preceded by Trilogy's original and quite different proposal, UAC (User Applications Component). The objective of UAC was simple: "Webify" five of the 42 mainframe applications employed by FBI agents in the course of investigations. On the face of it, this seems like a sensible first step toward modernization, but it can also be seen as the crucial error of the entire Trilogy project.

Putting a pretty front end on green screens did nothing to change the underlying processes, in which paper records were primary. Also, according to the OIG report, the choice of which applications to Webify was not based on objective research and evaluation. Instead, FBI IT managers simply picked the five applications used most often by agents.

Disastrous Turns

The FBI realized it didn't have the internal IT expertise to pull off Trilogy. So in mid-2001, it contracted with DynCorp (later purchased in early 2003 by consulting giant CSC) for the desktop and infrastructure components and SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) for the software.

Only a few months after the ink was dry on these contracts, the Sept. 11 tragedy struck, reshaping the mission of the FBI. No longer would the Bureau be concerned merely with law enforcement. Instead, to protect against terrorism on U.S. soil, the FBI needed to get into the intelligence business.

This shift turned the requirements for UAC inside out. Instead of beautifying old mainframe apps, the charter changed to replacing those applications with a new, collaborative environment for gathering, sharing, and analyzing evidence and intelligence data.

"About six months into the contract, SAIC was essentially told by the FBI that 'we really want to change what you're doing on this contract,' " recounts SAIC Group President Mark Hughes. " 'Set aside the work you've done to date and what we'd like you to do is work with us to build a brand new case-management system for the FBI. And by the way, we don't have any requirements for that yet, so we need you to work with us to help develop those requirements.' "

According to Hughes, those requirements were almost impossible to nail down, because the FBI's new mission set in motion a rolling transformation of internal processes.

One requirement was a so-called "flash cutover." In other words, says Hughes, "you build this big system, and when it's ready, you turn the old one off and you turn the new one on. To anybody who knows anything about big systems, that's a very risky way to introduce a new system."

SAIC claims that it pushed back on this and other unrealistic requirements. At the time, however, SAIC had a cost-plus-award contract. According to Gartner Fellow John Pescatore, these types of contracts estimate the real cost of a project and add a profit margin that is awarded annually to the contractor -- in full, in part, or not at all, depending on the government's rating of the contractor's performance for that year.

"So here's what happens," Pescatore says. "In the beginning, you never want to say no, because you'll get a bad rating. It essentially incents the contractor to be much more accepting of out-of-scope changes. It's kind of like a mass-suicide pact, except you're hoping a miracle is going to occur later on."

The Prototype From Hell

At the February 2005 hearing, Mueller said that the FBI delivered "finalized" requirements for VCF in June 2002, which included integrating the functionality of the five original ACS applications with the new system. But according to Hughes, the changes kept coming at a rate of more than one per day. Click for larger view.  

What followed was the mother of all misunderstandings. In 2002, Hughes says, SAIC offered a proposal identifying December 2003 as the deployment date for VCF. He maintains, though, that as the changes rolled in, SAIC alerted the FBI that the cost and delivery date would be seriously affected. Ultimately, instead of a final version, what SAIC delivered in December 2003 was an incomplete system for evaluation.

The result, according to Hughes, was consternation. "Apparently the communication about what was going on in the project had not gone up the chain in the FBI and in [the Department of] Justice and in Congress;" he says, "and when we didn't actually deploy a completed system in December 2003, there was a lot of surprise at those levels."

Mueller voiced his bitter disappointment over the December version of VCF in the hearings. "When SAIC delivered the first product in December 2003, we immediately identified a number of deficiencies, 17 at the outset. That soon cascaded to 50 or more and ultimately to 400 problems with that software."

Hughes still bristles at having that prototype tested as a final version, but he does admit to some culpability. "That tells you one thing we should have done better: talking at every level in the government to make sure everybody was on the same page."

Downsized Delivery

In January 2004, the FBI hired a new acting CIO, Zalmai Azmi, its fifth in four years. Azmi officially took the CIO job in May 2004. An intense back-and-forth between Azmi and SAIC ensued during the first half of that year, with SAIC determined to nail down an unchanging set of requirements and Azmi pushing for delivery based on a contract that was performance-based, rather than cost-plus-award.

Both parties got their wish in June 2004, when Azmi and SAIC worked out a two-track plan. In December 2004, SAIC would deliver an IOC (initial operating capability), a workflow application that would automate the case-management document approval process. According to the OIG report, the FOC (full operating capability) was simply a new effort to "identify new requirements for developing a functional case management system to replace the ACS."

The IOC delivery is still a source of pride for Hughes. "That system contained 100 percent of the requirements that the customer said they wanted in the IOC system," he says.

The IOC system is currently being field-tested, but the FBI's take on it was somewhat different. At the hearings, Mueller and Azmi repeatedly alluded to a still-classified report by the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation that tallied up a long list of deficiencies in the IOC. Azmi also stated that the IOC represents only one-tenth of the VCF's intended capability, a claim that SAIC Executive Vice President Arnold Punaro rejected in interviews with reporters after the hearing, arguing that VCF never had a baseline to begin with.

Groundhog Day Redux

As SAIC labored on the IOC, still other plans were afoot. In September 2004, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security began planning an interagency FICMS (Federal Investigative Case Management System) that would make the still-unfinished VCF obsolete.

The FICMS proposal sends FBI case management back to the drawing board at a time when, according to Hughes, SAIC's version of the VCF is further along than it may appear. "There are other capabilities that we have already designed and coded, and in fact the code is actually embedded in the IOC system -- but we turned it off and didn't test it or integrate it, because they didn't want it as part of the IOC."

Hughes estimates it will take three years for FICMS to become a working system. Meanwhile, he says, tests have already proven that SAIC's system, if deployed in stages, can scale to do what the FBI needs it to do. "I think it's crazy not to deploy it, regardless of how they want to go in the future," he says.

Today, however, everything remains uncertain. The pilot program for the IOC ends this month. The FBI says it will award a contract for the development of FICMS next month. If it does, then the FBI will likely abandon VCF.

After the fact, members of the Appropriations Committee have raised many objections to the way the VCF project proceeded: off-the-shelf software should have been considered, management should have been more forthright about problems, SAIC should have had its feet held to the fire.

The reality, though, is that IT backwaters like the FBI can't modernize without an extensible enterprise architecture, which the FBI admits it's only beginning to develop. Meanwhile, Gartner's Pescatore says only 76 percent of FBI personnel are using secure e-mail. Such outrages mean that, before any grand architecture rolls out, point solutions such as VCF must have their day.

Next read this:

• Why companies are leaving the cloud
• 5 easy ways to run an LLM locally
• Coding with AI: Tips and best practices from developers
• Meet Zig: The modern alternative to C
• What is generative AI? Artificial intelligence that creates
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• Software Development
• Enterprise Applications
• Technology Industry
• Outsourcing
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Eric Knorr is a freelance writer, editor, and content strategist. Previously he was the Editor in Chief of Foundry’s enterprise websites: CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World.

Copyright © 2005 IDG Communications, Inc.

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• Project management |

What is IT project management?

IT project management is the process of managing, planning, and developing information technology projects. Project managers can use software to move through the five phases of the IT project management life cycle and accomplish complex tasks more effectively.

IT project managers are adaptable and resourceful leaders. Carrying complex projects over the finish line isn’t an easy task, but the right leader does it time and time again. 

Having the right IT management software can be the key to project success. Our guide outlines what IT project management is and provides tips for managing IT projects.  

IT project management is the process of managing, planning, and developing information technology projects. IT projects exist within a variety of industries, including software development, information security, information systems, communications, hardware, network, databases, and mobile apps.

IT project developers deliver a product or service, while managers handle IT project management. Managers are in charge of communicating expectations and keeping projects on track and on budget to ensure the IT projects run smoothly.

What are the 5 phases of IT projects?

As an IT project manager, you can accomplish complex tasks more effectively using the five phases of IT project management. Each phase has different milestones that drive the project life cycle forward. Whether you’re managing sprints for an Agile project or process rollouts—map out your next project using the five phases below.

1. Initiation

During the initiation phase , determine the need for the project and create a project proposal. The project must also be viable for the team and the company at large. During this phase, make sure to also confirm the project is worth the allotted time and resources before moving forward.

2. Planning

The planning phase is a collaborative effort between you as the IT project manager and your team. Planning for the project involves setting budgets, identifying risks, and creating clear goals for what you hope to accomplish. 

A roadmap template can help you plan goals that you can then refer to throughout the project life cycle. 

3. Execution

The execution phase is when the team sets deliverables for the project. IT project managers play a crucial role by delegating tasks to hit milestones and keeping communication open among all team members. 

Use team collaboration software to ensure everyone is on the same page about who’s doing what by when. You may need to revisit the project plan during execution, as projects often experience changes during development. 

4. Monitor and control

During the execution phase, use IT project management software to track your team’s progress in real time. This involves monitoring the time, cost, scope, quality, and risk of the project itself. Using your project roadmap , you can evaluate whether the project is on track with your project proposal and goals, or course-correct if necessary. 

Once the project is complete, the closure phase begins. In this phase, ensure all work has been completed, approved, and moved on to the appropriate team. It’s also important to take some time to review any lessons learned during the project and determine what went well and what didn’t. The closure phase is crucial because it empowers your team to review and improve future methodology. 

What does an IT project manager do?

As an IT project manager, you must know how to communicate with everyone in your organization. You’ll be working closely with members of the IT department but you may also be in charge of discussing your team’s work with other teams.

Ensure the product functions: The goal of every IT project is to deliver a functional product that meets the customer’s needs. IT project managers are the first point of contact if things go wrong with a project, which is why you must prioritize functionality above all else. 

Assign tasks to team members: A project manager is a team’s go-to person when determining what their roles and responsibilities are for the project. As an IT project manager, take some time to understand IT teams so you can assign tasks effectively.

Track progress and performance: Once each project begins, project management professionals must track team performance, the project timeline , the budget, and how well the project is meeting its goals. IT project managers can use project management software to assess competencies and assist with professional development.

Lead Agile meetings with stakeholders: A stakeholder is often influenced by the outcome of the project. This could be senior management, a customer, or a product tester. As IT project manager, you’ll communicate with stakeholders and give them frequent status reports on the project.  

Challenges faced by IT project managers

You’ll face a fair number of challenges in your role as IT project manager, but with the right management tools, you can feel confident in your ability to address issues quickly. 

Time and budgeting

Time and budgeting are some of the biggest challenges you may face in IT project management. Without realistic deadlines for a project, you risk delivering a product or service that is of lower quality than it could be. 

Not having the resources to complete the project can also make teams and customers suffer. You can reduce time and budgeting challenges by prioritizing these items in the planning phase. 

Scenario: Senior management would like your team to perform a company-wide software migration within one month, but you’ll need an additional month because your team is too small and inexperienced to complete the migration in the allotted time frame.

Solution: Use IT project management software to keep senior management informed about your team’s availability and experience. That way, management can prepare a more realistic timeline when assigning IT projects.

Scope creep

Scope creep occurs when the original goals of the project become overshadowed if stakeholders continue adding new requirements and deliverables. It can potentially derail a project and requires constant maneuvering. 

To reduce the frequency of scope creep, set strong project objectives from the beginning, have a change control process in place, and do your best to communicate with stakeholders every step of the way. 

Scenario: Your initial project goal was to improve outdoor Wi-Fi at your company’s headquarters so employees and visitors can work from anywhere. During project execution, stakeholders ask you to expand the outdoor Wi-Fi reach to the operations center across the street and also allow download capabilities. 

Solution: IT project management can give clear project objectives at the start, so your stakeholders will know what can be accomplished during this project. For example, they would understand that requesting an extension of the outdoor Wi-Fi reach is reasonable, while requesting download capabilities is too extensive.

Miscommunication

Because IT project managers function as the go-between among team members, departments, and stakeholders, miscommunication can become a challenge if there isn’t an organized process in place to keep everyone informed. Prioritize communication using IT project management tools to lead your team to success. 

Scenario: Your company agrees to work with a local school and improve their learning spaces with increased access to technology. The project involves installing Wi-Fi and donating 100 computers to the school, but your senior manager thought you were only donating 10 computers.

Solution: Prioritize communication at the beginning of a project. Sharing frequent project status updates with IT management tools can ensure everyone is on the same page through the project life cycle. 

Risk management

Managing the risks of an information technology project is a necessary step in the initiation phase. During this phase, you must come up with alternate plans should your initial goals fall short. If you don’t manage risk on the front end, you’ll have a hard time picking up the slack when things go awry in real time. 

Scenario: Your team creates an online scheduling portal for patients at a hospital. You predict everything will run smoothly, so you’re shocked when a bug in the program causes cardiac patients to see gynecologists and neuro patients to see urologists.

Solution: With proper risk management, a plan is in place to quickly and effectively resolve the bug. Fixing the bug also means reassessing and identifying potential new risks raised by the fix. Risk analysis is an essential part of IT project management—try using a risk register to identify risks before they occur. 

Changing technology

Complex IT projects can take months or years to complete. One challenge in IT project management is keeping up with transforming technology as a project takes place. The project scope of your initial IT project must be flexible in case the needs of your customer change while your project is in development. 

Scenario: Your team takes on a long-term project to improve the GPS systems in cars. While working on this project, GPS phone apps come out allowing drivers to see traffic in real time. Your GPS system doesn’t include traffic, and including this feature would considerably extend your project length. 

Solution: Changing technology can’t be stopped, so your IT project must be flexible. In this example, your team would need to decide whether pivoting the project is a good business strategy to compete with advanced GPS phone technology.

Types of IT project management tools

IT project management tools can keep your project team organized and informed from project initiation to closure. These tools help visualize each team member’s role in the project and show the project’s progress in real time.

For all types of IT projects:

RACI chart: RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. Using a RACI chart , you can clarify the roles and responsibilities of your team members when working through projects. For each task or deliverable, designate which team members or stakeholders are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed. These charts can be useful in all types of IT projects, as there’s always a need for clarification among team member responsibilities.  

For projects with task dependencies:

Gantt chart: A Gantt chart —named after Henry Gantt—is a horizontal chart used to illustrate a project timeline. Each bar on the chart represents tasks in the project, and the length of each bar represents time. Gantt charts help teams visualize what work needs to get done and how tasks affect one another, like a waterfall. If your project involves many dependent tasks (in other words, tasks that rely on one another), then this is a great tool because your team members can see if and where tasks overlap. 

For projects that require tasks with small, incremental changes:

Kanban boards: Kanban boards show the work breakdown structure of what stage each task is in. Using Kanban boards in IT project management can help your team balance their work responsibilities and see other team members’ available capacity. Kanban boards work well when your project requires tasks with small, incremental changes. These task boards allow teams to break down tasks into checklists and progress stages. 

What is an example of IT project management?

An information technology team is developing a new iPhone application to help employees clock in at work. When putting together the project proposal for the iPhone app, the IT project manager consults with the app creator while also considering the needs of the end user. 

In this IT project example, we’ll use the five phases of project management to bring the iPhone app through development.

Initiation phase : The first step is to ask questions. Dig deep into how the app will help solve a problem. Consider how this iPhone app can provide a solution for employees and employers. Is creating this app viable for your team given the designated time and budget?

Planning phase : Next, you begin the planning phase. To do so, determine the budget it will take to make the app and assess who on your team can handle the coding of the app.

Execution phase: The most important part of executing the plan for your iPhone app is to identify your overall project objectives. In this example, your project objective is: “The goal of this time-tracking application is to provide an easily accessible way for employees to clock their work hours and to help employers keep track of their team’s productivity.”

Monitor, control, and closure phases: Use IT project management tools to monitor your team’s progress. With effective project management software, you can look back at the data during the closure phase. 

Streamline IT projects with project management software

A strong IT manager will ensure that your IT projects run smoothly, stay on track, and budget. Looking for a way to automate tasks as an IT manager? 

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Infrastructure Management 101: A Beginner’s Guide to IT Infrastructure Management

By Diana Ramos | June 21, 2017 (updated November 30, 2021)

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For any sized company or government agency, the rapidly expanding implementation of today’s technology creates unique and critical business challenges. Information Technology (IT) infrastructure management - not to be confused with the broad responsibilities of IT management - is the administration and management of essential operational elements to effectively, efficiently, and proactively utilize technology, information, and data. These elements include the computers, servers, networking, data, storage, physical and virtual facilities as well as software, processes, policies, staffing, training, security, mobile and virtual functionality, and cloud-based services that make up the IT infrastructure. Overall, IT infrastructure management is closely aligned with overall corporate operations, strategies, and goals. 

This article will introduce the concept and history of the term infrastructure , and then take a deeper dive into the word as it relates to technology – IT infrastructure management. Finally, we’ll offer advice on choosing the best IT infrastructure management solution for your organization.

History of Infrastructure

The term infrastructure has been used throughout history to describe the large and complex structures of military projects, civil projects, and public utilities. The word was first used in 1875 in France to describe railroad planning. However, prior to the 1700s, what later became known as infrastructure began with roads and canals for transportation and irrigation. The 1800s through the early 1900s added railroad, telegraph, electrical, water/sewer, subway, and telephone communication infrastructure. As technology evolved from basic computing to the Internet and beyond, business operations quickly became dependent on technology. Over time, the IT infrastructure became a backbone of business.

Today the term is used to encompass the ever-growing foundations, structural components, and relationships of today’s integrated business frameworks. The term, taken from the French infra , means under or below. This highlights that a firm foundation is needed to support a strong organizational framework. Below is a list of areas that are commonly referred to as infrastructure :

• Streets/roads
• Water utilities
• Electrical utilities
• Energy utilities
• Telecommunications
• Waste utilities
• Technology hardware, software, networks, facilities

What Is IT Infrastructure?

Today’s CIOs are tasked with efficiently operating the technology infrastructure that supports overall enterprise or corporate goals. Part of this responsibility includes increasing business value by streamlining information retrieval and reporting, providing proactive and agile responses to leverage information and technology, and quickly adapting to allow enhanced end user experiences. In order to accomplish this enormous undertaking, IT leadership relies on the myriad of tangible and intangible elements that make up the technology backbone of an organization, the IT infrastructure. 

The IT infrastructure consists of all elements that support the management and usability of data and information. These include the physical hardware and facilities (including data centers), data storage and retrieval, network systems, legacy interfaces, and software to support the business goals of an enterprise. The structure also includes hiring, training, policy, testing, process, upgrades, and repairs.

What Is Infrastructure Management?

The term infrastructure describes the structures required for the operation of a physical facility or business operation. As mentioned earlier, infrastructure management has evolved to include the true backbone of business, technology. This is referred to as IT infrastructure management. The purpose of IT infrastructure management is to provide structure and control of the functions responsible for diverse technical operations which generally involve hardware, software, and networking in both physical and virtual environments. The main goal is to minimize downtime and maintain business productivity. Because of the complexity of IT infrastructure, it is not uncommon for IT infrastructure management to be broken into substructures, such as systems management, network management, and storage management. 

Additionally, an enterprise IT infrastructure management team is typically responsible for the following essential IT elements and services:

• Asset lifecycle
• Capacity monitoring/planning
• Network utilization
• Availability
• Energy consumption
• Environmental issues
• Facilities (including data center infrastructure management )
• Physical and virtual assets
• Wireless and wired network operations
• Security (malware/virus protection)
• Mobile connectivity
• Maintenance/service updates

The services that the IT infrastructure management team delivers are typically behind the scenes. They maintain the technology that supports the daily operations, such as Internet, email, and data accessibility. The team relies heavily on real or near real-time management and monitoring solutions in order to maintain productivity. 

Understanding Remote Infrastructure Management

With the growing number of geographically disparate organizations, in addition to remote workers, cloud technology, and offsite data centers, Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) helps with the centralized monitoring and management of these unique components that make up growing enterprises. RIM is managed by either in-house IT technicians or outsourced to IT service providers who have the tools and are versed in managing remote infrastructure. 

The Gwinnett County Department of Transportation deploys a great example of infrastructure management that combines a public utility with technology and remote monitoring.

According to Tom Sever from the Gwinnett County DOT, “In conjunction with Applied Information , we converted all Gwinnett County School system school zone beacons to the Internet of Things. We monitor 270 beacons for temperature, power, battery status, lamp status, and many other failure points from our traffic control center with cloud-based software. Since the transition, failures have dropped by 80 percent, saving over 200 total man hours.”

Infrastructure Project Manager

There are many technical and non-technical roles that make up an IT infrastructure management team. However, an Infrastructure Project Manager (IPM) has some unique responsibilities when it comes to managing infrastructure-specific projects, such as upgrades, integrations, and repairs. Infrastructure project management involves many of the general project management elements like planning, execution, monitoring, testing, and project closure. However, it is also highly technical: all projects are associated with maintaining the continual operation of the IT infrastructure. IPMs commonly have a variety of ongoing projects without defined end dates, whereas traditional PMs work on discrete projects with a final due date. 

Here are some project management templates that may be a useful tool for the IT Infrastructure Project Manager:

Download Equipment Inventory Template

Excel  |  Smartsheet

Download IT Strategic Planning Template

Excel | Smartsheet

Download  Asset Tracking Template

Download  Software Inventory Template

How to Choose the Right IT Infrastructure Management Solution

The solutions available today focus on multipurpose functionality to support homogeneous or heterogeneous business environments. Therefore, they stress features like ease of deployment and use, instant insight and views, and predictive proactive monitoring. These software-based systems are also shown to have elements of self-learning that increase industry or company effectiveness.

Before choosing a solution, IT management staff must first define the services, controls, and reporting that are both required and desired to enhance operations - before calling in vendors for demonstrations. Many of today’s tools have scalable systems that provide onsite and remote capabilities for physical and virtual management, support industry-specific protocols, and include dashboards from vendors who offer training, consulting, and enhanced services. Remember, the solution you choose must address your unique business needs. For more complex aspects of the solution decision-making process, evaluate the following functional areas:

• Infrastructure lifecycle management (the lifecycle of an infrastructure asset from planning, through operation, and disposal or end-of-life)
• Capacity optimization and resource forecasting
• Granular monitoring and troubleshooting of physical and virtual assets (VM)
• Network monitoring of the entire infrastructure, including routers, switches, VPNs, firewalls, appliances, etc.
• Resource allocation
• Trend analysis and reporting across multiple data sources
• Threshold value alerting, triggers, and remediation
• Ability to “self-learn” to enhance operational functions
• Heterogeneous environment support, including virtual and cloud
• Communication and support for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft Azure
• Support for industry standard protocols, such as WMI and SMTP
• Remote and mobile access
• Network security functions
• Detection of problematic resources and perform preventative action
• Network utilization and system health checks
• Support for common services such as Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange

Additionally, many vendors tout ease of deployment, seamless integration, and real-time views into infrastructures that have multiple platforms, providers, and equipment. There are numerous offerings from vendors including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, BMC, Microsoft, and CA Technologies. Some vendors work to integrate legacy or acquired technologies into a single-solution approach. 

According to Jarod Greene , Vice President of Product Marketing at Cherwell Software , "Business is fast-paced and we need to constantly consider how we deliver IT services more quickly. Agility and stability do not seem to go hand in hand, but in order to remain dynamic and move quickly, IT actually requires a stable backend infrastructure and the only way to accomplish this is with active infrastructure management. You can not be agile in your service delivery without first establishing infrastructure stability. Both are essential in order to remain competitive. Remaining nimble with a focus on continuous process improvements will ultimately shorten time-to-resolve issues and improve uptime, which is exactly where you want to be."

Benefits of IT Infrastructure Management

The benefits of IT infrastructure management solutions all stem from the ease of operation, clarity of information and reporting, and cost savings. Behavior that supports these outcomes include:

• Rapid response to changing and disruptive conditions
• Flexible and agile procedures that lead to proactive (rather than reactive) management strategies 
• Automated work reduces labor, costs, and impactful events and incidents, allows better capacity planning, centralizes information, and provides near real-time information and reporting 
• Streamlined day-to-day functions and operations free up time for personnel so they can better plan for and meet demands of overall business strategy, including scaling for competitive growth
• Improved customer satisfaction and overall performance
• Reduced downtime by accelerating deployments and decreasing repair time

Although IT infrastructure management is implemented to simplify processes, it can also be disruptive, especially in the initial deployment. CIOs and CTOs are tasked to adapt within the constraints of their budgets and skills of their staff to “move at the speed of the enterprise” and quickly adopt, deploy, and manage new systems and processes - sometimes at the detriment of adequate planning and research. 

Business user requirements and consumer expectations for reliable IT services continue to grow. With these demands, the landscape of IT services and its management continues to become more complex and larger in scope. The need for simple solutions, clear reporting, real-time views, secure systems, cost-saving functionality, scalability, mobility, and reliability will also continue to grow. The promise from vendors, such as ease of deployment, day-to-day functionality, multi-tiered reporting, security enhancements, and capacity optimization also extend to the ability to go from “putting out fires” to proactive management strategies that leverage technology, data, and information for competitive growth.

IT Infrastructure Management for Healthcare

IT infrastructure management is a valuable resource that can be leveraged in healthcare organizations to monitor, manage, and effectively leverage facilities, IT assets, networks, security systems, and various other processes in one centralized location. IT infrastructure management in a healthcare organization offers a way to track, manage, and store resources, operations and process information, and protected health information (PHI).

While healthcare organizations can benefit from the visible and collaborative benefits that this sort of infrastructure management provides, they must also abide by stringent security, data protection, and compliance standards, such as HIPAA. To reap the benefits of centralized IT systems management while also remaining compliant to security standards, you need a powerful, real-time, and secure tool to run your systems.

Smartsheet is a work execution platform that enables healthcare companies to improve work efficiency, scale business processes, and securely manage and store PHI, while meeting or exceeding all of HIPAA’s regulatory requirements. Streamline reporting and organize all necessary information in one centralized location to ensure your IT operations and systems run efficiently.

Interested in learning more about how Smartsheet can help you maximize your efforts? Discover Smartsheet for Healthcare .

IT Infrastructure Management in the News

The cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), and mobility have and will continue to impact business operations. Simultaneously, the movement to the cloud is causing IT staff to evolve and plan for useful, adaptive, and scalable infrastructure management solutions. As enterprises move IT infrastructure to cloud-based systems, purchasing tools to support this transition will depend on a variety of cloud-specific elements, including whether the cloud is private, public (such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure), or a hybrid mix. The new IoT management suite provided by VMware expands the traditional datacenter infrastructure management to include cloud, mobile, and IoT.

It is no surprise that this unique and growing challenge associated with IT infrastructure management, IoT, and cloud are main topics at Gartner Research’s IT Infrastructure and Operations Management Summit in 2017. As Gartner literature on the event explains, “Transformation requires a solid foundation from which to drive and deliver sustained business value.” To that end, the three-day agenda for the event is packed with seminars on cloud solutions, technology trends, and harnessing the IoT, to both educate and dispel “outdated beliefs and practices” when adopting or enhancing IT infrastructure practices and management.

Looking toward the future of integrated infrastructure management services and solutions, the trend continues towards the adoption of private, public, and hybrid cloud offerings to build new infrastructures, enhance current capabilities, or integrate with legacy systems. Industry analysts at Gartner Research predict an 18 percent growth in the global public service cloud market, and forecast that expenditures for 2017 will reach almost $250 billion.

A Better Way to Manage IT Infrastructure and Operations with Smartsheet

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

How Often Should a Business Upgrade its Technology? [And Other Questions Answered About Improving Your Systems]

Written by Emily Jones on February 27, 2023

If your business is considering upgrading your technology, there are several different factors you’ll need to consider in your decision making.

Where should you make improvements? How often? Does the business upgrade its technology every time there’s a new advancement? Or should you keep your equipment and software until it gives you problems?

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If your business is looking to make technology upgrades, here is a helpful framework outline to follow that considers three main areas and their specific considerations:

• How often a business should upgrade its technology;
• What factors you should be considering; and
• Which areas may offer the highest return and best impact for your investment.

How Often Should a Business Upgrade Its Technology?

There’s a balance to technology upgrade timing. Upgrade too early and you may be engaging in an expensive project to sunset a system that’s still useful. Upgrade too late and your business may be slowed because of outdated infrastructure, software or equipment.

So, how often does a business need to upgrade its technology? While there are no hard and fast rules, there are signals for the optimal times to upgrade your business technology.

1. Downtime

Most systems will encounter some downtime. But when those outages or when lack of system availability becomes frequent, it can impact your productivity and your ability to deliver for your customers. If you’re seeing more and more outages due to equipment or software issues, even short ones, it’s time for a technology upgrade.

2. Business Growth

If your business is growing, it’s likely that your technology needs are as well.

If your infrastructure, equipment, software and connectivity were planned for a much smaller business, you’re likely lacking key functionality and agility that you’ll need as the business expands.

A growing business has more data and more people accessing networks and resources. As part of your growth, you should begin planning what technology upgrades are needed and do so in a scalable way that will accommodate further growth (at least for a while).

3. Changing Company Direction

If your business changes how it approaches the products it sells or services it offers, or if you’re planning launches of new products or services, it may be time to re-evaluate the effectiveness of the equipment, software and infrastructure that supports those areas of the business.

For example, many businesses have shifted from brick-and-mortar operations to a hybrid or completely remote working environment. Has your hardware, software and infrastructure been able to keep up?  This change in company direction would be an important factor to consider in how often the business should upgrade its technology, especially in securing your data.

As your company transitions through upsizing, downsizing and various changes, it’s important to keep your systems optimized and secure.

4. Compatibility

As your company changes and adds new technology to your business, you’ll likely encounter existing technologies that are no longer compatible with your new systems.

An example of this would be adding a new device that’s capable of processing faster, but the remaining infrastructure is unable to handle the new processing speed. Your expectations of the new device making things better may not be realized without fully evaluating how it interacts with your other existing infrastructure.

If your legacy technology can no longer effectively communicate with the new ones, you won’t reap the benefits you’ve invested in. Especially with software changes, you could end up adding manual processes to work around the shortcomings, which defeats your initial objective.

This is obviously counterproductive and the opposite of what technology should be doing for your business, so if this sounds familiar, it’s time to have your entire infrastructure and software evaluated to make sure you actually receive the maximum benefits of a technology upgrade.

5. Security Concerns

Cybersecurity should be a priority for all companies today.

Cybercriminals are getting smarter and using more sophisticated tools. When patches and updates are no longer available for your technology, it becomes a gaping hole in your defenses.  Most hardware and software vendors have an end-of-life timeframe, and after that period of time, no more development dollars are spent to make sure that it has appropriate patches and updates. This is also an issue with custom-written applications or equipment that has been custom built.

To keep your data and your customers safe, outdated technology should be phased out and replaced.

6. Productivity

Technology and productivity go hand-in-hand. But when connections become slow or experience frequent interruptions, or when workarounds are creating more manual work, your productivity is negatively impacted.

When you notice signs of productivity slowdowns, it’s time to investigate replacing the technology causing the issues.

Evaluating the Signals for Upgrading a Business’s Technology

Some signals your technical environment needs help include:

• Employee complaints about equipment;
• System availability issues;
• Waiting for things to process; and
• Manually having to combine information.

If these signals sound familiar, you’re probably in need of a technology upgrade.

For hardware, we typically recommend having these conversations every four to five years; for software, it could be more or less frequent than that.

Evaluating signals like these will help you to determine how often your business should upgrade its technology.

As part of your technology upgrade plans, it’s important to not just look at what meets your needs today, but also what your needs might be in the next three to five years.

What Factors Should Be Considered for Business Technology Upgrades?

After determining how often your business should upgrade its technology, you’ll want to determine what factors you should consider in your technology upgrades.

Evaluating IT infrastructure requires looking closely at the performance of your company’s current system and measuring that against the goals of your business. It’s important to define the business’s objectives, requirements and nice-to-haves and then determine the available offerings against that criteria.

Essentially, it’s important to ask yourself what’s important to your business. When making decisions about your company’s technical environment, there are a few overarching considerations concerning your specific operations and needs that can help guide you.

When, where and how you access your business’s systems is an area that is always evolving with newer, higher transmission speeds. It’s important to remember that access is more than just how you connect, it’s what you can connect to, and how you’re granted access.

Identifying your business goals and needs is the first step to evaluating your access needs, and it’s crucial that these things align. Regardless of whether your business leverages an on-premise, cloud or hybrid environment, it must have consistent, secure access to be of benefit to your company.

As companies look to modify their technology, making smart choices regarding costs are always of utmost importance.

Your technical infrastructure needs to be looked at holistically so that you’re not focusing on fixing one issue and causing three more. Your data (and access to it) is crucial to your business, and consistent availability is needed.

Remember that making cost-cutting decisions when it comes to technology can ultimately be more expensive in remediation expenses in the long run.

3. Speed and Flexibility

Modern companies must be prepared to turn on a dime to meet customer expectations, competitor challenges and know their own company’s position.

Over the last several years, being able to work and access your company data from anywhere has proven to be an advantage if done right. It can also be a huge headache if done improperly and even put your business’s data at risk.

The huge advancements in software have allowed companies to have quicker and clearer insight into how their companies are doing. The faster you can see how things are running, the quicker you can make informed decisions about your business. Managed detection and response software can also turn a reactive approach into proactive functionality when it comes to data threats.

Finding and implementing the right solutions will provide you with the knowledge, speed and flexibility you need in today’s technological environment.

Areas to Consider When Upgrading Your Business’s Technology and Infrastructure

Once you’ve identified the timing of how often your business should upgrade its technology, and then pinpointed your access, cost, speed and flexibility requirements, you are prepared to make valuable enhancements in your company’s technology.

Here are three key areas to consider when evaluating what enhancements to make.

1. System Infrastructure and Connectivity

Increased network capacity or redundant connectivity may be worth investigating for businesses with mission-critical access needs and little tolerance for downtime.

Speed and access can be hindered by aging system infrastructure. Current servers may not be able to scale to meet the increased demand from a broader user base.

The wrong size equipment in your system infrastructure can also degrade any improvements you’ve made in bandwidth, meaning your company won’t be able to reap the benefits from the larger capacity.

It’s important to look at the entire infrastructure holistically and make sure it matches the goals you are trying to achieve.

2. Equipment

When looking to upgrade computer equipment and communication devices, companies must ask a few important questions to evaluate their own priorities:

• What do employees need to be productive?
• Is remote access needed on a consistent or an as-needed basis?
• How many people need new or upgraded equipment?

For instance, business analysts who have been running computationally intensive statistical models on desktop computers would likely need equally powerful laptops capable of meeting the demands of their work, while an administrative team member hardly needs the same kind of power from a workstation.

Yet, the reverse may be true when it comes to communication. The business analyst may have minimal needs when it comes to video conferencing or remote access to a business phone, while an administrative team member may rely heavily on phone or video calls to maintain communication with other employees and vendors.

3. The Cloud

The cloud has revolutionized how businesses utilize computing resources, and it’s definitely something to consider if you’re looking to upgrade your business’s technology. The most attractive benefits of cloud solutions include potential cost savings and the minimal resources needed to maintain cloud-based applications.

With a cloud-hosted server, the addition of hardware resources can be immediate with very little or no interruption to your business. There are also cloud options that include server updates and patching as part of the solution.

Cloud solutions also offer the flexibility and wide availability that can prove to be beneficial. The cloud can simplify a team’s access to applications and storage from wherever they are working at a given time, without needing to change workflow or learn new applications.

Learn More About How, Where and How Often a Business Should Upgrade Its Technology

If done thoughtfully and correctly, technology upgrades can lead to better services that meet the access requirements of the workforce, while encouraging speed and flexibility to address business needs in a shifting operational landscape, all which lead to better service to your customers.

If you’d like to discuss your business’s specific needs and what technology upgrades can make the biggest impact on your company,  connect with a Warren Averett Technology Group team member who can help .

This article was originally published on October 27, 2021 and most recently updated on February 27, 2023.

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MIT Technology Review

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Modernizing data with strategic purpose

Data strategies and modernization initiatives misaligned with the overall business strategy—or too narrowly focused on AI—leave substantial business value on the table.

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In partnership with Thoughtworks

Data modernization is squarely on the corporate agenda. In our survey of 350 senior data and technology executives, just over half say their organization has either undertaken a modernization project in the past two years or is implementing one today. An additional one-quarter plan to do so in the next two years. Other studies also consistently point to businesses’ increased investment in modernizing their data estates.

It is no coincidence that this heightened attention to improving data capabilities coincides with interest in AI, especially generative AI, reaching a fever pitch. Indeed, supporting the development of AI models is among the top reasons the organizations in our research seek to modernize their data capabilities. But AI is not the only reason, or even the main one.

This report seeks to understand organizations’ objectives for their data modernization projects and how they are implementing such initiatives. To do so, it surveyed senior data and technology executives across industries. The research finds that many have made substantial progress and investment in data modernization. Alignment on data strategy and the goals of modernization appear to be far from complete in many organizations, however, leaving a disconnect between data and technology teams and the rest of the business. Data and technology executives and their teams can still do more to understand their colleagues’ data needs and actively seek their input on how to meet them.

Following are the study’s key findings:

AI isn’t the only reason companies are modernizing the data estate. Better decision-making is the primary aim of data modernization, with nearly half (46%) of executives citing this among their three top drivers. Support for AI models (40%) and for decarbonization (38%) are also major drivers of modernization, as are improving regulatory compliance (33%) and boosting operational efficiency (32%).

Data strategy is too often siloed from business strategy. Nearly all surveyed organizations recognize the importance of taking a strategic approach to data. Only 22% say they lack a fully developed data strategy. When asked if their data strategy is completely aligned with key business objectives, however, only 39% agree. Data teams can also do more to bring other business units and functions into strategy discussions: 42% of respondents say their data strategy was developed exclusively by the data or technology team.

Data strategy paves the road to modernization. It is probably no coincidence that most organizations (71%) that have embarked on data modernization in the past two years have had a data strategy in place for longer than that. Modernization goals require buy-in from the business, and implementation decisions need strategic guidance, lest they lead to added complexity or duplication.

Top data pain points are data quality and timeliness. Executives point to substandard data (cited by 41%) and untimely delivery (33%) as the facets of their data operations most in need of improvement. Incomplete or inaccurate data leads enterprise users to question data trustworthiness. This helps explain why the most common modernization measure taken by our respondents’ organizations in the past two years has been to review and upgrade data governance (cited by 45%).

Cross-functional teams and DataOps are key levers to improve data quality. Modern data engineering practices are taking root in many businesses. Nearly half of organizations (48%) are empowering cross-functional data teams to enforce data quality standards, and 47% are prioritizing implementing DataOps (cited by 47%). These sorts of practices, which echo the agile methodologies and product thinking that have become standard in software engineering, are only starting to make their way into the data realm.

Compliance and security considerations often hinder modernization. Compliance and security concerns are major impediments to modernization, each cited by 44% of the respondents. Regulatory compliance is mentioned particularly frequently by those working in energy, public sector, transport, and financial services organizations. High costs are another oft-cited hurdle (40%), especially among the survey’s smaller organizations.

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Gantt chart template for: Server Upgrade

When project planning in spreadsheets is chaos , and when fancy project management software is overkill — try Tom's Planner.

Server Upgrade

A server upgrade project is a neat little project that focuses on enhancing the capacity, speed, or overall performance of existing servers. It's kind of like giving your old car a new engine so it can run smoother and faster. It's a key part of maintaining and improving the technical infrastructure of any business or organization. Now, these projects can include swapping out old hardware for new, more powerful components or even migrating data and applications to new servers. Depending on the scope of the upgrade, it can be a quick job or a complex, time-consuming task. But at the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that the servers can handle the increasing demands placed on them.

Tom's Planner is an easy-to-use online visual project and resource planner.

Challenges and Pitfalls

Planning a server upgrade project can be a real head-scratcher at times. Probably the biggest challenge is ensuring minimal downtime. You see, companies can't afford to have their servers offline for long, so upgrades must be swift and smooth. Plus, there's the risk of data loss. Backing up all data before starting is a must, but sometimes, things can slip. Another common pitfall would be compatibility issues. New server hardware might not play nice with existing systems or software. A related hiccup could be underestimating the resources needed. It's like planning a picnic but forgetting the sandwiches. Always ensure you have the right server specifications for your needs, or you might find yourself with a system that can't handle the load.

Tom's Planner is being used by more than users worldwide.

Overcoming these challenges

Overcoming these challenges is a piece of cake with a powerful project scheduling tool like a Gantt diagram tool. Imagine it as your personal project road map, allowing you to visualise each step of your server upgrade project. An easy-to-use Gantt chart can help you identify potential compatibility issues before they become problems. It’s like a friendly neighbour telling you that those lovely flowers you just planted are actually invasive weeds. In terms of resources, a Gantt chart ensures you never forget the 'sandwiches'. It helps in planning the right server specifications, keeping track of all the key components needed for the upgrade. It's like having a handy shopping list right in your pocket! Moreover, a shareable project planner, like an online Gantt chart, turns project management into a collaborative effort. Your entire team can access and contribute to the plan, ensuring everyone is on the same page. It's akin to planning a neighbourhood block party, where everyone knows what to bring and when to show up. And the cherry on top? Most Gantt chart tools are cloud-based project planning aids. They're accessible anytime, anywhere, offering flexibility and convenience. It’s as comfortable as working from the cosy corner of your living room!

Tom's Planner is here to simplify your project planning, so you can focus on what matters most.

For Tom's Planner, Excel or as an image file

The template is available in three formats: for use in Tom's Planner, Excel, and as an image download. We genuinely believe you'll find Tom's Planner much more easy-to-use compared to Excel, and certainly more straightforward than tinkering with an image. Give it a shot – it's free!

Or, enter your project description here below, and have our AI craft a template for you.

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Technology Upgrade Project

Each year, the University sets aside funding to upgrade classroom technology and designated computers.  Historically, these upgrades occur all year long.  OIT will introduce a new process this year to target a majority of these upgrades during the summer months.

Although compressing the schedule offers several challenges, it also offers several benefits.  By ordering several hundred computers at one time, we are able to secure the hardware at a reduced cost, thus allowing us to upgrade more machines.  It also allows us to minimize the impact to faculty during the heavier academic terms.  The Client Architecture team, who oversees the installations, will have more time to focus on lab management and software distribution during the academic term with less oversight on upgrades. In addition, older hardware tends to be more problematic. So ensuring that the technology is refreshed regularly decreases the number of hardware related disruptions.

Under the Technology Fund, primary computer and instructional computers are eligible to be replaced after a certain timeframe.  In order to receive funding, the computer must be assigned to a faculty or staff member and have a current LANDesk agent installed and functioning.  Individuals with eligible machines will receive an email during the second week of April.  That email will contain a link to the survey which requests additional information, and allows those individuals to recommend a date for their installation.  Once the schedule has been established, they will receive a confirmation email with the date and time of the appointment.  The installation itself should take one hour unless there is a very large amount of data to be transferred.

We have made several changes to our install process to expedite the process as much as possible.  During the summer months, Premier Logitech will increase their staffing to accommodate the larger workload.  Since this will bring a lot of new faces onto campus, each technician will be wearing a Premier Logitech badge to identify themselves.  We hope to complete between 800-1200 computer upgrades during the summer months.

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Rachel Mulry

Associate CIO for Planning and Customer Service Office of Information Technology View all posts by Rachel Mulry

Core Network Upgrade Project

Also in core network upgrade project.

• Distribution Layer Switch (DL) Replacement Project
• Core Network

The University of Michigan Provost and Information Technology Executive Committee has approved a $7.3 million dollar Core Network Upgrade Project through the IT Capital Program. The Core Network currently delivers 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) speed to all Ann Arbor academic buildings and 100Gbps to the MACC data center. This project will increase network speeds by as much as 100 times, along with other added benefits. Planning for the network needs of the campus of tomorrow will require even more capacity and reliability.

The data network is a technical foundation for teaching, learning, and research at the University of Michigan. Students, faculty, researchers, and medical and administrative staff depend on high performing, highly available wired and wireless networks to achieve the mission of the institution.

Features & Benefits

The Core Network Upgrade project will:

• Support data intensive science research requiring extensive bandwidth.
• Increases network speeds by as much as 100 times.
• Improve the resiliency of the core network.
• Increases the power outage survivability of our core communications hubs.
• Decrease network complexity.
• Invest in fiber such that future investments are less expensive and provide higher speeds. 
• Improves service and reduces costs for electronics investments by approximately $1M annually.
• Positions us to take advantage of advances in electronics, software, speeds, and pricing over time.
• If desired, permits U-M to consider future network integration with Michigan Medicine.
• If desired, permits U-M to consider future network integration with Dearborn (in progress) and Flint. 

Communications

Missed the Network Town Hall? Watch the recording

Work continues on major upgrade to core data network

WiFi Upgrades to help transform campus network capabilities

Information Technology Services

• Network Upgrade

• Office of the CIO
• Leadership & Departments
• Project Management Office

Project: Campus Network Upgrade Project (CNUP)

Objective .

Upgrade wired and wireless network infrastructure providing a faster, more resilient and more secure user experience.

Project Overview

Our campus is getting a major technology upgrade over the next few years. We're replacing outdated equipment with new, faster components including routers, switches and Wi-Fi access points. Why? Students, faculty and staff bring multiple devices to campus, in the dorms and in our offices, which is putting a lot of pressure on our network. We need to grow with the times in order to meet the demand. During this network upgrade, we are also making our campus more secure. We're implementing a "Zero Trust", Role Based security, which means our users will only be able to access data they need to access. This is how we make sure private data stays safe. Plus, we are adding power backup and dividing the network into sections. That means if something goes wrong, like a power outage or a hardware glitch, it won't affect all of campus at once. This makes the network more reliable and resilient.

Our goal is to make campus internet faster, safer and more reliable for all.

The new network will allow the campus to be able to meet students, faculty and staff expanding networking needs for years to come.

Once fully implemented, students will be able to pre-register all of their devices (laptops, smart TV’s, game systems, etc.) before arriving on campus. 

Each student will have a personal key for their devices that is unique. This will allow each student to have secure access to their devices from anywhere on campus.

Implementation Plan

The new network will be updated alongside the existing network. This way, we won't suddenly switch the entire network to the new one and hope everything works perfectly. Doing it this way will ensure a smoother transition by minimizing the impact of potential issues.

The first step will be to create a Proof Of Concept “Lab” with the new network to test the new configuration without impacting the rest of campus and the transition from Ivanti for VPN access to AnyConnect VPN.

Once a reliable configuration is established, we will begin transitioning campus buildings to the new network architecture.

The Holmes Convocation guest Wi-Fi will be upgraded to allow event attendees to have fast reliable internet access during events.

The Hickory campus will be tied into the main campus network and at the same time, the building network will be brought up to date.

Once all buildings are converted and running stably, the old network components will be decommissioned.

What is a Network?

A system of interconnected computers, devices or components that communicate and share information with each other.

What Is Network Infrastructure?

Network infrastructure is the hardware and software that enables connectivity and communication between users, devices, apps and the internet.

Can you explain further what Zero Trust means?

Zero Trust security means that no one is trusted by default (from inside or outside our network), and verification is required before gaining access to resources on our network. This added layer of security can prevent data breaches.

Who do I contact for more information?

Contact our IT Project Management Office at  [email protected]  or David Griffiths at  [email protected]  for project questions.

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Vietnam EV maker VinFast's challenges escalate risk for parent Vingroup

As Vietnam's biggest conglomerate Vingroup doubles down on its electric vehicle business with ambitious global expansion plans, it faces growing financial risks stemming from loss-making unit VinFast Auto .

A guide for procurement leaders in information technology

For modern procurement leaders, success in IT procurement is predicated on the identification of logical expectations of the software or solution's performance, plus the measurement of reliable metrics and KPIs for measuring the performance and success of the product. So how you can accomplish this? Start by following the IT Procurement process as outlined below and working closely with your business stakeholders to understand their needs.

What is the IT Procurement Process?

IT procurement is defined as a series of activities and procedures directed toward the acquisition of information technology. These activities are usually categorized within a single process formally known as the IT Procurement Process , which is widely recognized as one of the key strategic business processes within every modern business organization.

The IT Procurement Process is the means by which a company is able to execute its internal and external projects efficiently because all necessary products and services required for the completion of those projects have been made available. The process allows business leaders to determine the requirements for IT systems, and also allows them to communicate with suppliers, administer procurement contracts, manage assets and assure the quality of the acquired products and services.

Considerations from CIOs

‍ The foremost leadership position under the purview of IT typically belongs to the Chief Information Officer, or CIO. Despite the uniformity of their titles, CIOs have varied widely in their beliefs about the role of procurement in IT and how closely it should be managed in relation to their companies’ projected returns on investment (ROI). Specifically, while some CIOs are concerned with ROI, others feel that IT leaders are best served when they focus on the innovation and ingenuity the organization needs to create through the use of the purchased technology. This is far different from the thought process of a procurement leader in another industry, like a manufacturing procurement leader —who can more easily think about the interactivity between different resources and their effect on the finished physical product.

Of the CIOs that factored ROI into their operational equations, several felt that ROI should remain a secondary concern, because project initiation should be the foremost objective, and ROI is not thought of as something that can be accurately gauged and predicted within the early stages of an IT project.

Many CIOs feel that procurement leaders are poorly equipped to handle IT purchases despite their belief that they are competent to do so. This stems from those procurement leaders feeling empowered by their handling of other purchases for less dynamic pieces of equipment or machinery, which have no obvious connection to IT purchases.

One of the concerns with procurement leaders attempting to generate an accurate ROI projection for IT projects has to do with attempting to calculate ROI across each individual project the IT software and equipment would be involved with. For example, a company investing more money overall in the staff involved with an IT project has the potential to yield a superior ROI compared with companies that invest less, with all other variables being equal. Further, procurement departments are routinely accused of believing that software will fix everything, despite quality differences between types of software, and despite the cutting of corners during the implementation of that software.

Finally, the CIOs polled also felt as if procurement teams are often allotted and undue degree of authority. If the procurement teams are going to exercise that power, they should be admonished to integrate themselves with the project teams they are assisting and wield their power as if it were a tool to help bring the project to fruition with the best possible software and equipment. They are not advised to view it as their sole duty to act as a cost-cutting authoritarian.

Acquiring vendor partners in IT

Prospective vendors often engage with procurement teams from the standpoint of ROI, but procurement teams are cautioned against looking at vendor-derived ROI numbers, which are often inaccurate. Unless the vendor is also able to present information suggesting the ROI projections were derived from the real-life performance measures generated by a tech company of a similar size with a similarly skilled staff, and with a similar amount of money invested in the project, then those numbers are not to be believed. Without those similarities established, the ROI projection from the vendor may be wholly inaccurate.

Procurement team members are frequently concerned with the functionality of the items being purchased and whether or not they will perform as advertised. While this attitude tends to persist within the procurement departments of IT companies, technology and software have developed to the degree where technical performance is a relative non issue. Therefore, preemptive meetings with vendors to address technical issues are usually unnecessary.

Instead, agreements with IT vendors should be structured around SLAs and KPIs . An SLA—or service-level agreement—is a contract between a service provider and its internal or external customers that documents what services the provider will furnish. It also defines the service standards the provider is obligated to meet, which allows customers to understand the benefits of the service in clear terms, along with how the vendor is prepared to address performance issues with the products.

The three primary types of SLA are multi-level, customer level and service level. Service level SLAs are uniform across the entire business. This means if the human resources department and the finance department are using the same service, the same service agreement will be valid across both departments.

A customer level SLA applies to all of the services used by a customer that are provided by the same service provider. If an IT vendor provides its customers with a suite of solutions that authorizes the use of separate products by the same customer, the provision for the customer to use all of the vendor’s distinct services is accounted for within the customer level SLA.

Finally, the multi-level SLA involves an SLA that is separated into multiple levels that apply differently to different members of the organization, but remain within the same SLA. In practice, one or two departments may be governed by a service level SLA, while other departments would have access to all of the services detailed under a customer level SLA, yet all of these distinctions are plainly stated within the same multi-level agreement.

KPIs— key performance indicators —are the agreed-upon indicators of progress toward an intended result. KPIs are designed to create an analytical framework for decision making, and within the structure of a contract with an IT vendor, KPIs should be used to dictate whether or not a service has lived up to its guaranteed performance level, and can also influence the terms of the contract and the final amount paid to the vendor for their service. Certainly, if the agreed upon KPIs demonstrated that a service did not function as promised by the vendor, then the IT customer should be entitled to some sort of refund or reduced rate since the service failed to deliver results at the contractually-stipulated level.

The IT Procurement Process Framework

More than 20 years ago, the Society for Information Management put together a working group to develop a framework for IT procurement management. The working group returned with a six-process framework which was divided into two categories: Deployment processes and Management processes.

Deployment processes consist of activities that are performed every time an IT product or service is acquired. Each individual procurement spawns a life cycle that begins with the identification of requirements, continues with the acquisition of the necessary products and services, and ends with contract fulfillment.

Requirements determination involves all of the steps and approvals required to proceed with the procurement process. This includes sub-processes like project team organization, the use of analytics to justify investments and general assessment of the risks involved with undertaking the project.

Acquisition is the process of identifying the appropriate suppliers and finalizing procurement arrangements for the needed products and services. Finally, contract fulfillment is the process of managing and coordinating all activities involved in fulfilling the contract requirements . It includes accepting products or services from the vendor, installing service systems, and the general administration of the contract.

Under the category of management processes are activities involved in the overall governance of IT procurement. The three primary classes of IT procurement management processes are supplier management, asset management, and quality management.

Supplier management involves the optimization of customer-supplier relationships to add value to the company. It includes activities such as strategy development within the supplier portfolio, the creation of relationship strategies for key suppliers, assessing supplier performance, and managing supplier communication.

Asset management is the process of optimizing the IT assets acquired during procurement throughout their entire life cycles to align with their intended purposes. It includes such things as the development of asset management strategies, policies, and information systems, evaluation of the lifecycle cost of IT asset ownership, and management of asset redeployment and disposal policies.

Quality management is the process of realizing continuous improvement in the IT procurement process and in all products and services a company acquires for IT purposes. It includes product testing, statistical process control, acceptance testing, quality reviews with suppliers, and facility audits.

Important IT procurement themes

The Society for Information Management ’s working group also identified four themes which they considered to be of the utmost importance to senior procurement managers. Those themes are Process Management, Design and Efficiency; Measurement, Assessment, Evaluation; External Relationships, and Internal Relationships.

The first of these— Process Management, Design, and Efficiency —revolves around the idea that IT procurement managers are primarily concerned with the optimization of the procurement process. Beneath this theme fall issues like the use of automated tools like EDI and procurement cards, reduction of cycle time in contracting processes, development and use of all reporting systems, and the integration of sub-processes at early and later stages of the procurement life cycle .

The second most important theme— Measurement, Assessment, Evaluation —defines  the search for reliable ways to measure performance, and this applies to both external suppliers and the internal procurement process. These dual focuses allow procurement managers to measure their own contributions while simultaneously measuring the performances of their outside vendors.

External Relationships and Internal Relationships delve into the methodology behind the creation of effective working relationships. The importance of such relationships is an outgrowth of the cross-functional nature of the IT procurement process within organizations, and the general transition from internal to external sources for information resource acquisition.

The process framework and key issues identified by the SIM IT Procurement Working Group also set guidelines for future efforts to improve the IT procurement process. The five action items they created are:

• Develop IT procurement performance metrics and use them to benchmark the IT procurement process.
• Clarify roles in the procurement process to build effective internal and external relationships.
• Use the procurement process framework as a tool to assist in reengineering the IT procurement process.
• Use the framework as a guide for future research.
• Use the framework to structure IT procurement training and education.

The most important action item on this list is the mandate to Develop IT Procurement Performance Metrics and Use Them to Benchmark the IT Procurement Process. The four classes of performance metrics identified by the work group were effectiveness metrics, efficiency metrics, quality metrics and cycle time metrics.

At the time of the initial development of the IT procurement process, solid performance metrics were virtually non existent. Decades later, we are privileged to live in an era where new forms of performance data are now readily available, and IT procurement managers are encouraged to use every resource at their disposal to promulgate the best metrics for evaluating performance.

Measure everything

Obviously, the reliance on performance metrics dominates discussions of procurement within IT, and this is a result of the service orientation of the software in the industry. The data-driven nature of modern business activities means IT customers arrive at vendor negotiations with a prepared list of performance measurements they need the vendor’s services to help them attain, while the vendors counter with a list of projections about the lofty standards they purport that their services should allow any customer to attain as long as they implement the service and effectively execute within its parameters.

In short, success as a procurement leader will be overwhelmingly predicated on the identification of logical expectations for product performance, coupled with the establishment of reliable metrics for measuring the performance of those products. This can be accomplished by becoming thoroughly enmeshed within the project team, understanding its needs, gathering and transmuting information into reasonable metrics, and then relaying that metrics to vendors in the form of contractual obligations.

Expert procurement and supply-chain tips sent straight to your inbox.

Related resources.

5 Questions to Ask Procurement Tech Suppliers

Elevate Your Business: A Comprehensive Procurement Plan For 2024

Why collaboration is essential to building successful RFPs

From Wi-Fi to more storage, try these cheap ways to make your old tech devices better

Are you reading this on a two-year-old iPhone SE 3? Go ahead and make those over-the-hill jokes – it's almost hitting the average smartphone lifespan of 2.5 years.

Get smart, actionable tech news and tips like this daily in your inbox. Join 500K folks and get the Current. It’s free!

Upgrading your laptop or smartphone is inevitable. But wait before you throw out that clunky computer. Even when a piece of tech starts showing its age, you can still give it a new lease on life.

Make room for vacation photos

Most modern phones don't have memory card slots. Instead, expand your cloud storage to offload photos, videos, and other files to free up space. (Saving to the cloud means you get secure backups too.) You should use the option built to work with your phone.

◾ For my Android-using friends, Google One upgrades start at $2 for 100GB of space.

◾ If you're on an iPhone, iCloud+ pricing starts at $1 for 50GB.

Pro tip: If you and the fam all use iPhones, share an iCloud+ account to save some money.

Playing the oldies

Old speakers , that is. Want to get Spotify or Apple Music streaming around your home? You don't have to invest in a complete Sonos set of pricey wireless speakers if you’re still rocking the older wired kind.

Add a Bluetooth adapter (like an Esinkin model ), and those old speakers can play the classics – or the latest hits – beamed right from your phone or computer.

One Amazon reviewer said, "This thing was plug-and-play on a 56-year-old family console. It's the best of both worlds: Modern tech with classic design and sound. Now I can listen to vinyl, AM/FM stereo, or my own playlist in style.”

Wi-Fi from anywhere

Tired of walking around with your laptop to find the best Wi-Fi signal? Blast Wi-Fi dead zones with a Wi-Fi extender.

Boost your router’s wireless signal with options like the TP-Link RE305 . It's certainly cheaper than buying a whole new router or mesh system, and if you're having connectivity issues, it's a good place to start.

Increase your TV’s IQ

You can bring any TV into the streaming age as long as it has an HDMI port. Try a Google Chromecast with Google TV , the Amazon Fire TV Stick , or the Apple TV 4K to make your old box smart and streaming-ready.

Work your workstation

Your laptop might not be speedy, but upgrading your workstation has real benefits. A few upgrades (that are a lot cheaper than a new computer)

◾ A comfortable keyboard can speed up your typing.

◾ A larger monitor is easier on your eyes and gives you more screen space.

◾ An ergonomic laptop stand eases serious strains on your neck.

PC performance booster

Feeling ambitious? Upgrade your computer by upgrading your RAM. Tons of guides online can help you with this one – just don’t blame me if you take on a techy project you’re not ready for.

Computers that freeze up and are generally slow-moving can benefit from this upgrade, but you’ll need to open them up.

◾ Inside your computer, you’ll find slots for RAM sticks, the memory that gives your computer room to think.

◾ Swap out the current RAM sticks for new ones that are faster and offer more capacity for a significant PC performance boost.

Play on, player

This one’s for the gamers. You can buy extra storage for both PlayStation and Xbox consoles that plugs in and gives you more room for your games.

The PS5 has an internal storage slot you can fit an M.2 SSD card into, too – something like the WD Black SN850 . You’ll need a screwdriver, a few minutes and Sony’s instructions .

On an Xbox Series X or S, it’s even easier. The expansion slot is on the outside. Buy a compatible card like this Seagate one , and follow Microsoft’s instructions .

Learn about all the latest technology on the  Kim Komando Show , the nation's largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today's digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website. 

Off the page, into the water: UC alum and seventh-grade teacher teaches through canoe building

The delhi middle school teacher initiated a special learning program in her middle school classroom..

Emily Hohlefelder knows the importance of digital platforms in today’s learning environments. A seventh-grade teacher at Delhi Middle School, Hohlefelder has experienced the impact of digital connectivity on education both in the classroom and during her own time as a student at the University of Cincinnati.

“There are so many platforms!” says Hohlefelder, pointing to the lasting impact COVID-19 and remote learning had on teaching and learning. “So many different ones, all asking students to present their information in different ways: recording themselves, recording just their voice or having to create some sort of digital image.”

Students in Emily Hohlefelder's seventh-grade class work on the frame of the skin-on frame canoe. Photo/provided

None of this is news to the 2023 graduate of the College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology, who was introduced to future-forward teaching tools during her first year as an undergraduate in the  Middle Childhood Education program . Specifically, it was an educational technology class with School of Education professor Sarah Schroeder that opened Hohlefelder’s eyes to the possibilities of instruction and learning in a hyper-connected, always-on world.

She also honed in on how platforms, especially interfaces for creative student work, can cause anxiety in some students, leading Hohlefelder to complete and submit a project on reducing student anxiety around technology use. Schroeder was impressed with Hohlefelder’s insights and invited the first-year student to present her research at the Ohio Undergraduate Technology conference in Columbus. 

“I was like, ‘Sure, I’ll go with you!’” laughs Hohlefelder, who went on to become dual-licensed in middle childhood and special education with a certificate in digital learning design. “I felt pretty underqualified – I was 19 and in my first year, but she took a chance on me.” Schroeder subsequently helped Hohlefelder publish her work as well, co-authoring a paper titled  “Reducing Student Anxiety About Creative Digital Work”  for publication in  Edutopia , an online outlet for educational news and insight.

“I ended up doing a grant-funded project on reducing student anxiety with technology while I was an undergrad. It fueled a lot of great new information, especially coming out of COVID, on how technology can cause a lot of anxiety when it comes to different methods of learning for students.”     

Building Life Skills (and a Canoe)

Proven expertise with technology and insight into digital platforms might make Hohlefelder an unlikely champion for hands-on, nature-focused learning. But for a person with a lifelong ambition to help all learners reach their potential, she works to stay alert to opportunities that expand her ability to reach pupils – which is how she ended up bringing a canoe-building project into her classroom.

“The director of the program is one of my good friends,” says Hohlefleder. “I had watched him go into schools for the past three years, so why wouldn’t I want to bring this into my own school?” The Urban Wilderness Program , she goes on to explain, is a Cincinnati-based non-profit that delivers wilderness experiences to schools with kids who, demographically, don’t enjoy easy access to outdoor enrichment.

“A lot of my students had not been in a canoe before. They had not been on a body of water.”

Emily Hohlefelder, Seventh-grade teacher at Delhi Middle School

Seventh-grade Delhi Middle School students shape parts for the classroom canoe build. Photo/provided

The STEM-based project saw students construct a skin-on frame canoe as part of their daily classwork, which Hohlefelder was able to tie into traditional areas of study such as math and science, as well as social studies and language arts. “At the same time, they were able to learn teamwork, critical thinking skills and how to work together to pursue a common goal,” she says. “And it always helps students, especially in middle school, when that goal is tangible. So fostering that kind of community was truly the goal we were looking for here at Delhi with the canoe build.”

Another significant benefit of the classroom canoe project? The collaborative build provided a holistic means to reach students who sometimes struggled to engage with learning material. “It was fun to see kids who were usually reserved or not interested in the academic setting of the classroom really come out of their shell when it came to getting to use their hands for something,” explains Hohlefelder. “The build takes about two weeks, so it becomes routine for them. A lot of them really enjoyed it.”

A Risk Worth the Reward

The canoe-build project was, admittedly, a big swing – especially for a teacher so early in their career (this is, in fact, Hohlefelder’s first year teaching at Delhi Middle School). But that same spirit she found during her first year, when she said yes to the conference opportunity in Columbus despite feeling underqualified, spurred her to take the chance.

 “As teachers, we already have a million things going on,” she says. “And trying something for the first time? I’m like, this could fail – this could go very badly. But it’s worth taking the risk if it’s going to benefit the students.”

A student connects planking to one of the ribs on the canoe frame. Photo/provided

The canoe is currently on display (alongside a pair of oars carved as part of the program) in the school, but Hohlefelder envisions this canoe build as an annual seventh-grade project that, in time, populates a nearby pond with a fleet for public use.  And though the students didn’t know it when they initially built the canoe, there is a part two to this project they recently learned about – a May field trip in which they themselves will take the canoe out for some freshwater fun.

“We have to teach them, at the end of the day, that it’s not about the tests,” says Hohlefelder. “It’s not about the data. It’s really about what kind of people we are teaching here. How are we teaching them to serve the community when they’re older?

“Projects like these are the ones that I know they’ll remember past middle school.”

Featured image at top: Emily Hohlefelder stands next to completed skin-on frame canoe built as a seventh-grade classroom project. Photo/provided. 

• Next Lives Here

CECH’s School of Education is highly regarded for preparing the next generation of educators. The program is led by a team of experienced and qualified faculty who are dedicated to teaching students to meet the demands of modern classrooms and address the educational needs of diverse student populations. The program offers a variety of courses and experiences that will help students develop their understanding of child development, instructional methods, and classroom management.

For more information about the School of Education,  please visit the school’s website.

Contact the College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology . 

• School of Education
• Alumni Association
• College of Education, Criminal Justice, & Human Services

Related Stories

April 11, 2024

Emily Hohlefelder, a 7th-grade teacher at Delhi Middle School, applied lessons she learned as a UC education student in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology (CECH) to initiate a special learning program in the classroom. The result? A canoe-building project that proved both educational and uniquely engaging.

Amid shift to remote learning, UC students emerge ed tech leaders

July 10, 2020

When area schools scrambled to move instruction online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UC education students stepped up to help teachers adapt their lesson plans online.

Journal-News: UC education expert weighs in on ‘new normal’ for schools

August 17, 2020

More than 70,000 area K-12 students will soon resume their school lives in Butler County amid a very different school atmosphere, reports the Journal-News. In examining how COVID-19 will affect the lives of Butler County students, it turned to Laura Dell, associate dean for the University of Cincinnati’s School of Education.

University of California, Irvine

Canva For Campus: Now Available through 2024

by Kristen Mcintyre | Apr 9, 2024 | Home Page News , News | 0 comments

In an effort to provide design tools and services to the University of California, the Office of the President has announced free access to premium Canva accounts in 2024. Canva is a popular visual communications platform offering a wide range of design tools and templates for various needs and skill levels. UCI staff, faculty, and students can enjoy access to premium features until Dec 31, 2024

Users will be notified of any extension of this service at the end of the year, but it is likely that this service will shift to a recharge model for employees and contractors after 2024. We have no definitive pricing information at this time and updates will be published on the Canva for Campus Service Page . 

Canva For Campus Features : 

• Brand kit: UCI colors and fonts have been uploaded for brand consistency. 
• Templates: Access customizable templates for presentations, flyers, posters, social media posts, newsletters, business cards, and more. 
• Collaboration: Users can collaborate on designs in real-time. 
• Mobile App: Create and edit designs on the go.

Key Information

• Upon logging in with a UCI email address, users are automatically upgraded to a Premium account. This account is linked to any existing personal Canva account under the same email. 
• Users can transfer assets between their existing Canva account and their new Premium account. 
• Users are advised to download all assets and store locally or on OneDrive or Google Drive as access to Premium features is expected to end at the end of the year. 
• Assets created on Canva should follow UCI Brand guidelines
• More information about Canva for Campus can be found on the Service Page and Knowledge Base article .
• For log in or access support, contact the OIT Help Desk at [email protected]  
• For functionality and usability support, email Canva support at [email protected]   or use their helpful chatbot. 

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