Divisional charter: Intent and Purpose
The Strategy & Business Operations Division is a critical hub for all the divisions within UW-IT. A cornerstone of our division’s purpose is to elevate UW-IT’s responsiveness to institutional needs. We achieve this by leveraging consultative, collaborative, data-driven, transparent approaches that enhance our collective capabilities as “one IT organization.”
Through effective governance, stakeholder engagement, relationship management and the strategic allocation of our resources, we align our service and project portfolio with the University’s strategic priorities and ensure we develop IT solutions and a technology roadmap that is agile and adaptive to the University’s needs. This approach empowers us to help drive institutional maturity, technology investments, and, and position the University to leverage and continue to advance its technological capabilities.
This division aims to imbue a customer-centered and stakeholder-informed approach in all that we do, so that our customers and stakeholders serve as the bedrock of the organization and drive us to consistently exceed expectations and deliver unparalleled value in IT services at the University.
Divisional units
-
- Strategic Alignment: The Strategic Alignment unit enables UW-IT and the UW to make the best investments in information and technology services. The team is responsible for Information & Technology Governance, UW-IT strategic planning, enterprise architecture, metrics and measures and policy administration. Working closely with units in SBO and across UW-IT and the UW, the team enables and aligns the flow of changes from governance direction and strategy to measured outcomes of information and technology services.
- Communications and Engagement: The Communications & Engagement unit is the operational arm of UW-IT’s strategic outreach, listening, collaboration and connection with its customers, partners and stakeholders. It focuses on building and nurturing strategic relationships and fortifying UW-IT’s identity as a trusted and innovative partner, in partnership with the Strategy unit. This unit spearheads relationship management activities, engagement strategies, reputation management, brand strategy management, service adoption enablement, and marketing functions. Through adept storytelling and strategic messaging, the unit ensures that UW-IT’s narrative resonates powerfully with its diverse audience, and content reaches stakeholders and customers at the right time. This unit prioritizes proactive and strategic convening with partners and stakeholders to gain insights that inform the strategic technology roadmap.
- Finance & Business Operations: With a multifaceted portfolio encompassing finance, forecasting, capital planning, business management, budgeting, accounting, procurement, logistics, warehousing and workspaces, the Finance & Business Operations unit ensures the strategic planning and allocation and utilization of resources, fiscal transparency, stewardship and accountability. Using sound financial management and procurement, this unit ensures UW-IT offers cost-effective technologies and allocates funding toward building advanced capabilities. Strategically, this unit prioritizes resource development, and it collaborates closely with the project management office to plan and allocate resources towards high priority projects and initiatives. It provides the foundational infrastructure necessary for UW-IT’s daily operations and sustainability.
- Project Management: The Project Management Office is the central resource for all UW-IT projects, helping to drive timely, cost-efficient, and sound project delivery across the division. This team maintains the enterprise project portfolio, defines/maintains best practices and standards for effective program and project management, and also supports key, high-priority projects from initiation to completion.
- Service Management: The Service Management Office helps guide UW-IT in a set of organizational capabilities to deliver valuable services to customers and oversees the organization’s service portfolio and service lifecycle. UW-IT uses ITIL as a key framework to define and adopt common roles, practices, service structures, workflows and tools to maximize the value of our services and provide strategic and operational effectiveness and efficiencies. This unit ensures ongoing process improvement across the enterprise, and partners with the Service Management Platform team for UW Connect continual improvement.
Divisional leader
Alissa Mahar, Associate Vice President for Strategy & Business Operations