Sponsored podcast discussion on how one of the UK's largest universities gained control of project management with a Transformation Experience Workshop.

1. Case Study: How HP Helped Nottingham Trent University
Transform IT Operations and Management
Sponsored podcast discussion on how one of the UK's largest universities gained control of
project management with a Transformation Experience Workshop.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod. Sponsor: HP
Dana Gardner: Hi. This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re
listening to BriefingsDirect.
Today, we present a sponsored podcast discussion on how Nottingham Trent
University has sought and gained strategic operational efficiency and
improved IT management.
In this case study discussion, we’ll hear how a combination of professional
services and portfolio management technologies allowed this 25,000-student
university, one of the UK’s largest, to improve end-user satisfaction while
freeing up IT resources to pursue additional innovation.
To understand how, we're joined by Ian Griffiths, Director of Strategic Partnerships at
Nottingham Trent University. Welcome to the show, Ian.
Ian Griffiths: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Gardner: We’re also here with Michael Garrett, Vice President of Professional Services for HP
EMEA. Welcome to the show, Michael. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect
podcasts.]
Michael Garrett: Thank you Dana.
Gardner: Now, Ian, the first question goes to you. When you began to think about improving
how you did IT there, in your mind what was the one glaring thing that needed to be changed?
Griffiths: We were very, very good at moving forward and doing lots and lots of things, but
delivering products at the end of that period was more difficult. We seemed to be running around
in circles and didn’t quite meet customers’ expectations. So, we were doing a lot, working really
hard, but not really delivering the last mile.
Gardner: When you started to peel away the layers and tried to figure out why that was the case,
what did you discover and why did something like a professional services involvement become a
priority for you?

2. Griffiths: We found that our processes were not really defined well enough. We really weren’t
getting sign-off from the business, and the expectations were never really met. So it was clear
that we were not doing something well, and we didn’t quite know what that was. And our teams
within the department weren’t gelling that well together either.
Gardner: So perhaps having some outside additional authority experience brought to the table
seemed to work for you?
Earlier attempt
Griffiths: Yes. That worked really well. We had had another attempt about 18 months before
and had some consultants in, but it didn’t really gel. We were aware that we had a
partnership with HP, and HP Professional Services seemed a sensible way to
go. But we were still doubtful as a management team within the IS
Department whether it was really going to work. And we are very pleased
with the outcome.
Gardner: Let’s learn about Nottingham Trent University, one of the largest.
You’re in Nottinghamshire and you have 25,000 students. Tell us a bit more.
Griffiths: We’ve been a higher education establishment for about 160 years. We’re one of the
biggest providers of sandwich education, which means that students have two years at the
university, a year in industry, and then a year at the university.
We're seen as a popular university that has good reputation for placing students at the end of their
courses, and we got top of The Green Agenda twice in the last three years within the U.K. We've
got about 150 people working in the IS Department on three campuses and nine academic
schools.
Gardner: Tell us about your responsibilities. What is it that you’re involved with in terms of
helping these 150 people do their jobs better?
Griffiths: I have responsibility for the strategic partnership we have with companies and with
firms. I have responsibility for the regional network within the East Midlands of the U.K., which
is connecting all the universities in that region and all the further education colleges. And I also
manage relationships with key suppliers, such as HP.
Gardner: Let’s go to Michael Garrett. Michael. It sounds as if Ian has had a relationship with
HP, but looked for something bigger, and they were even doubtful that you could help them at
first.
Garrett: It’s often imagined that these organizations look to pure play consulting organizations
for that advisory activity. In Nottingham Trent’s situation they were willing to listen to a different
type of vendor or organization in that space as to what they could offer in their approach. What’s
different for HP Professional Services is that it forms part of HP’s Software organization. Our

3. consulting capability is very focused on IT transformation, operations, organizations, and
applications.
But it’s about bringing that into real practical use quickly with the support of technology. That's
the real differentiator we wanted to bring to customers like Nottingham Trent, and hopefully
that’s true with what we've seen in the practical implementation and the work we've done with
them.
Gardner: Ian, tell me a bit about the journey. How has this worked out for you? When you
began to try to determine what was wrong and what you needed to do, how did that unfold? It
sounds as if you had a forest, but the trees somehow weren’t working in a capacity that allowed
you to achieve your requirements.
Initial workshops
Griffiths: That's correct. We had some initial workshops where all the senior management team
of the IS Department worked with HP and looked at what we wanted to achieve and looked at
what the journey might look like to get there. I have to congratulate HP. They were able to get
that team to gel together within IS in a way that we hadn’t before.
We spent a lot of time working together and working through the structure, the plan of the
department, and what we called the tube map of the department. Everything, in a sense, was
allowed. HP was very good at giving us a straw man to look at. In other words, giving those
examples of what other companies have done, but forcing us to discuss them in detail and change
them into what was right for Nottingham Trent.
They weren’t trying to sell the straw man, but were using the straw man as an example to move
us forward, and it worked extremely well. Although there were some heated discussions amongst
IS staff, HP was very good at facilitating those discussions.
Gardner: Typically we hear about the need to address people, process, and technology, when it
comes to these sorts of projects. But it also sounds as if you needed to have a high level of
customization, that it needed to be recognized that you are your own organization with your own
variables, and that a cookie-cutter approach or a too general or methodological approach
wouldn’t really be right.
Griffiths: That's correct. We had to go back to the rest of the department to try not to force
something new on people that, as far as they could see, had no relevance to the situations they
were in. We had to find a way as well of getting the business to buy into our new methodology,
getting the business to feel some ownership, and getting the business to make some decisions
during the planning of projects and the ending of projects.
Gardner: Michael Garrett, the need to customize, is that something that you valued? Do you
think that this is an example of an area where HP is differentiated?

4. Garrett: It’s that level of being able to bring the input, the straw man, and then guide
organizations around that model. To customize from scratch takes a great deal of time and can
take too much energy and cost. What we’re trying to do is bring our method and models at the
start point and then work in a very collaborative, but directed, way to get clients to a point,
although, a configured approach rather than a completely dispersed approach.
Therefore, we get to things more quickly, but absolutely meet the requirement of the individual
organization. We’ve got to appreciate they are different across different industries and different
areas, and strong cultural alignment is critically important. We certainly saw that in this program.
Griffiths: The important thing again was that we were producing our outline, and that outline
allowed us to go away and do a lot more detail later. In other words, we got the big picture
agreed upon and then all the details were passed back to teams within the department to build up
details in the areas where they had real knowledge of what happened.
Gardner: It also seems important, when you’re going about such a large scale activity, to be able
to measure along the way how things are going and perhaps offer feedback. Incentives were
necessary or even helped a few more heated discussions, as you said, but you can’t measure
where you’re going if you don’t know where you are.
Was there a point at some time, where you needed to get a state, an understanding of where and
what’s going on in order to know how to measure, and what did you to do to get that?
Define projects
Griffiths: An important step early on in this was beginning to define how many projects we
were running as a department and to categorize work into projects that were developmental and
projects that were more of the business-as-usual type.
We found in the end that we had over 100 projects running simultaneously. Some of those
projects had been running for more than a year, some had no real defined endpoint, and the
customer requirements weren’t documented in a thorough way.
It’s important to measure how many projects you’ve actually got, and actually have a start date
and a planned finish date for them. One thing we learned was that 100 was too many for us to
run, and we were able to cut down by finishing some off, to less than 50 that we have now.
Gardner: So by rationalizing this, getting some visibility, exercising triage and prioritization,
you've been able to cut your active projects in half. Is that correct?
Griffiths: That's correct.
Gardner: And what has that done now? What are some of the metrics of success by getting more
of a handle over your portfolio and managing it?

5. Griffiths: Probably the biggest one is that projects are getting completed and the project didn’t
become the be all and end all and continue running forever. We were actually delivering
something that the customer was expecting. And the customer, the student or the staff
department, had a glow that they have had something delivered to them.
Gardner: And what have been some of the educational benefits at a larger perspective beyond
the strict technology benefits? Has this improved in any way in which you can measure your
success and your basic mission in life of educating students?
Griffiths: The student satisfaction with IS has gone up over the last two to three years. They're
very happy with our technology and technology moving forward. But again, we found that
people were happier with the delivery of an item, rather than as IS was before, striving for
technical perfection.
Gardner: So you were really understanding your requirements and what was necessary to get
these goals.
Griffiths: If I have to give advice to other people, it is about the 80/20 rule that 80 percent can
be delivered in 20 percent of the time. Most people are happier with something delivered that
matches the expectations, but perhaps not all the bells and whistles, and then move onto the next
project.
Gardner: A lot of times in organizations, the budgets are not growing rapidly and nowadays
that's clearly the case. I imagine you had to be thinking about cost consciousness and energy
conservation. Is that true that you’ve been able to keep your cost level, but increase satisfaction
and allocate your IT resources more efficiently?
Aiming at 50/50
Griffiths: Yeah, it’s correct. Before, we’ve had the figures of, again, 80 percent being used in
the areas of business-as-usual and only 20 percent in project and development work. We quickly
moved to a 70/30 split and our target is to move towards 50 percent. We're not quite there yet,
but we’re a lot more like 60 percent business as usual, 40 percent new development work.
Gardner: So all things being equal, you've been able to take your operating, maintenance-level
budgeting, reduce the percentage there and put it more into innovation, creating more
productivity, and developing therefore even higher satisfaction. It sounds like a virtuous cycle of
adoption.
Griffiths: It’s a virtuous cycle and the other thing that is gained from that is appreciation
amongst other departments within the university and with senior management with what IS was
delivering, and getting them to prioritize what we did.
There was a problem, if we look back two or three years. IS very much decided what the
priorities were. Now, the business is deciding and even deciding in the case that a project that

6. was a favorite of a senior member of staff, he or she may decide that it no longer is a top priority,
compared with other projects that needed to be delivered.
Gardner: Is there something about the products themselves, the portfolio management
approach, that now allows the business side of the organization, the leadership in this case, to
have more visibility or input? How were you able to get it?
Griffiths: More visibility and more input. The example we always give is of a jam jar. You can
keep putting rocks into a jam jar, but in the end, it becomes full. Unless you allow something to
come out of that, nothing happens. So you’ve got to be able to allow things to finish and give you
some capacity.
The other thing that I talked about was looking at the business benefits of everything we were
doing and deciding the nice-to-haves probably weren't going to get prioritized at this stage.
Gardner: You mentioned earlier the tube map. Has that also provided visibility across the IT and
leadership or organizational divide, or is this something you’re strictly using within the IS or IT
organization?
Griffiths: We're using it outside the department to make people realize that we are working to an
operational framework. As such, we have them stuck up round the department. And in the rooms
where we have project meetings, they exist as well. As to vocabulary, we have senior staff using
the phrase "the gate," where approval has to be given. The business has to be involved in the
approval and deciding what priorities it has at that stage.
Gardner: Michael Garrett, the way that Ian is describing this, being able to double their
innovation budget, cut their project numbers in half, get buy-in from leadership, a sense of
cooperation across the organizational boundaries, is this typical? How would you describe this in
terms of the industry at large?
Typical situation
Garrett: It's a typical situation that we see in a lot of organizations, even in very mature, even
global and enterprise organizations that struggle with these challenges of organizational
alignment and processes to support that. Project selection identification and transitioning to
survey is the common problem we see.
With Nottingham Trent, we regulated it very quickly through that organizational design, then
into the process to support that, and then working out what are the catalog and services that they
offer. How do we then build that into projects and programs and then manage that into service
transition?
It's very common. We see it in a lot of places. More mature organizations believe they do this
very effectively. Nottingham Trent acknowledged that they needed help. It probably put them

7. ahead of a lot of other organizations, especially in university space, which is a fast moving sector
in UK, to be able to do something that many other large organizations just can't do.
Gardner: And clearly, the need to understand the software, the technology, the culture, really is
a comprehensive holistic activity. Hitting one or two of those alone won't do it.
Garrett: It's important that it's continuous. If you build the right organizational relationship and
engagement model, you take the workshop approach that we have up front and take your
organization through that, right through to something tangible that’s delivering the real outcome
in the business that’s very visible and usable. I think that’s very different than having different
organizations do different types of consulting.
There aren’t many organizations that have that breadth and scope of capability to take someone
from conceptual situation right through to practical implementation of technology to support that
problem, and that’s where we like working with organizations like Nottingham Trent, that’s a
great model.
Gardner: And Ian, is this something now that you’re building on? You mentioned that virtuous
effect, the adoption effect. Are you able now to move towards working at service-level-
agreement (SLA) levels or with key performance metrics and indicators. Is there a broadening of
how you’re rationalizing and even professionalizing how you go about these processes?
Griffiths: That's correct. We produced a lot of what we call Level 3 processes from this and we
looked at what our customers felt. We found that we’re having regular discussions about how we
can tweak the diagrams and the systems that we’ve got in place. We see it very much as a live
document, a live methodology and we’re looking at ways we can improve as time goes on.
Gardner: In wrapping up, I was hoping, Ian, that you might be able to share some 20/20
hindsight. If you were to offer some advice to an organization that was beginning to move more
towards a comprehensive portfolio management, project management approach, looking at this
more holistically and from the process level, what might you offer them in terms of lessons
learned?
Griffiths: It's important that you have all your senior staff together designing the system from
the start. We found that if people miss the early workshop, we tended to go back around the loop
again. So I would say get your staff together and devote enough energy to it.
Feeling ownership
But don’t go into all the detail. Leave your staff on the ground, who’ve got more knowledge of
the details inner workings of some elements of it, to do some work so they feel some ownership.
And very quickly get an appreciation with your senior staff within your organization, not within
IS, but from outside the IS department, of what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve.

8. But in the end, you need a few quick wins. In other words, if you can get a couple of projects
working through the scheme quickly, people begin to think it's going to work.
Gardner: They'll see the success and they'll double down on that. Michael Garrett, we've come
back to this workshop concept several times in discussion, I think that it's called the
Transformation Experience Workshop. Why is that so powerful? Why does that seem to really
work in terms of coalescing and getting these larger projects underway?
Garrett: It's something we've used for a few years now, something we developed in-house and
we see as a really effective mechanism. It starts off in a fairly classic way of where are we, the
current state, looking at future state, and workshop of the organization through that. But it's done
in a very live, interactive way.
So it's not a classic style workshop. We walk people around the room. We take them on a
journey, and we bring them together through that process. As Ian said, if you didn’t attend the
early workshop process, then you struggle sometimes to buy into it. It takes more time, and we
end up reiterating things later on. The Transformation Experience Workshop is a way of bringing
people together and bringing them around their own problems in a very active physical way.
We can do it in a small period of time, but usually people dedicate a day or so to that process.
What they get out of it is that they bring themselves together around the challenges, the
problems, and as Ian said, the quick wins, the things we can then go and address quickly. So it
has a very different feel and a very different outcome than a classic workshop approach that
many consulting firms have.
Gardner: Very good. I'm afraid we have to leave it there. You’ve been listening to a sponsored
podcast discussion on how Nottingham Trent University has sought and gained strategic
operational efficiency and improved their information technology management. I'd like to thank
our guests. We've been joined by Ian Griffiths, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Nottingham
Trent. Thanks so much, Ian.
Griffiths: Thanks very much, and it's a delight to pass on our experiences to others.
Gardner: And we've also been hearing from Michael Garrett, Vice President of Professional
Services for HP EMEA. Thank you so much, Michael.
Garrett: Thank you and thank you, Ian, for the great partnership and work.
Gardner: This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thanks again for
listening and come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod. Sponsor: HP
Sponsored podcast discussion on how on the UK's largest universities gained control over
project management with a transformation workshop. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC,
2005-2012. All rights reserved.

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